


Nineteen Years Before

by PseudoLeigha



Series: The Reasons Mary Potter Still Isn't Done (Works in Progress) [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Dark!Lily, This one's going to be dark, fair warning, ritualist!Lily, ritualist!Pandora
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 14:25:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11419878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: All of this will probably become very clear, very quickly, but this is the one where canon!Ginny (or, erm… my version of canon!Ginny, as featured in Endings, Dear Tom, and That Which Does Not Kill Us) falls victim to a combination of spells during the final battle, after Harry is resurrected, but before he reveals himself to the crowd. She gets sent to the Past, firmly believing that Harry is dead and Tom won in her own universe. She really, really wants to see Tom dead, and Fate and Dumbledore intervene to place her right in the hands of the most likely person to make that happen: Lily Evans, the Order of the Phoenix's most ruthless Healer.After they convince Ginny that the cost of sending her home will be too high to reasonably pay, she tells Lily and Pandora Sage Willow (Luna's mum) all about Tom and her own war, and the three of them conspire to end Voldemort in 1980.





	1. The Battle of Hogwarts

It was stupid, a stupid thing to think about, when she was setting shields and returning curses with all the fury she could muster, but Ginny Weasley couldn't stop seeing the look on her mother's face, shouting that she was only sixteen, underage, shouldn't be fighting.

For one thing, her birthday was literally _weeks_ away – it hardly mattered. For another, what did they think she had been doing since September, trapped in this joke of a school? She hadn't told them the details, but they weren't stupid. They had to know that she hadn't been bowing to the Death Eaters in charge without a fight. She had been so angry with her parents when they hadn't let her come back after Easter. Relieved, too, because she was – had been – so horribly, fundamentally exhausted, and disgusted with herself for being relieved, but mostly she was furious – so much so that her father had eventually allowed her to go stay with the twins, instead of at Aunt Muriel's with him and her mum.

She had kept her temper, refusing to fall into the now-familiar pattern of that argument, and tearfully put forth the only part of the truth that had the slightest chance of changing her mother's mind: She couldn't stand by while all her family fought and maybe died. They would have none of it, not even Harry, and he _knew_ what she was capable of, after the DA.

She would have left if necessary, and snuck back in to help, regardless of what they thought, but she could have kissed Lupin for suggesting they not send her away, that she be allowed to stay in the Room. Not that she _would_ stay, her father's glare notwithstanding. She just had to wait until everyone else had finished using the tunnel to the Hog's Head, and she'd be free to join the fight. It wasn't like they could afford to leave anyone behind to babysit her.

She watched reluctantly as everyone, even _Percy_ , marched off to the fight, then made herself busy with the slow trickle of people still making their way into the school, relaying everything she knew about the situation again and again, before sending them off to find the most defensible positions they could. She helped organize the evacuation when Filch escorted what looked like most of the school up to the Room, and had just been about to leave when first Tonks, then Madam Longbottom clambered through the passage.

Harry, Hermione, and her brother had stumbled down the stairs that led to the school half a minute later, armed with basilisk fangs and wild-eyed looks of determination. She didn't question them when they demanded she leave. She had a very good idea what they were on about – what they had been doing all year, despite their efforts to keep it a secret.

No one had ever really asked what it was like to be possessed by Tom Fucking Riddle. She didn't remember much of it, when he had used her to summon the Basilisk, but the last time, when the two of them had teetered on the border of life and death, bound together as tightly as one person, well… That was a different thing entirely. She was fairly certain that you couldn't pour your mind and soul into someone else without risking the chance of sharing more than you wanted, and after nearly five years of sorting through the jumbled mess of second-hand memories and knowledge left to her when that connection was interrupted, she knew more than she ever _wanted_ to know about horcruxes and the mad experiments Riddle had done with them.

She didn't know _everything_ , she was certain, and out of the five she knew he had created (the diary, his grandfather's ring, his mother's locket, the Chalice of Hufflepuff and the Diadem of Ravenclaw), she was fairly certain none of them were in any of the places he had considered leaving them and discussed with the Diary years after it was created. She had checked (carefully, of course – she didn't want to get caught by the Death Eaters _or_ by anyone who might think it a bad thing that she was attempting to hunt down bits of Voldemort, following hints a teenage version of him had left in her head years before), the summer after fourth year, when she had been trying to figure out if any of it was real, and there had been nothing.

Wool's Orphanage, for example, didn't even exist anymore, and according to Bill, Tom Riddle hadn't ever opened a Gringott's account, under his real name or any number of possible aliases. There was no hint of Dark Magic at the London Public Library or at Buckingham Palace when she'd got Fred and George to check, luring her then-seventeen brothers into the project with a story about a famous treasure of Morgana, stolen and hidden away in muggle hands. The scepter that went with the Crown Jewels, _did_ have a powerful dark spell on it, to compel the loyalty of the muggle Nobility to their sovereign, but there was no sign of a horcrux at the Tower, either. She had briefly thought that he had managed to get one into the Department of Mysteries, and wanted it back, during the year that followed, but it turned out all that was over a stupid _prophecy_.

She had spent much of fifth year, when she knew Harry was having private meetings with the Headmaster, agonizing over whether she ought to take her suspicions to the grandfatherly old wizard, but knowing as she did how he had treated the young Riddle, she had, in the end, decided against it. (Though if she had realized that Harry hadn't known what the horcruxes _were_ that he had been searching for all year, she might have reconsidered, or at least told _him_.) Not because she felt anything like pity for Riddle – he had been cruel and sadistic long before he met Dumbledore – but because she feared that if the Headmaster knew how she had been tainted by his diary, she would be carted off to St. Mungo's or something, in an effort to neutralize whatever small part of him had attached itself to her. She was certain (now) that the memories were only that, but she didn't want to take the chance that she would be shut up with mind healers, or worse, that Riddle (Voldemort) would find out somehow that she knew more about him than practically anyone, and have her killed like Bode.

Not to mention she hadn't wanted her _family_ to find out about, well… any of it. They still thought of her as their innocent little girl, and she was sure that it would be easier to let them think that, than to try to explain that the innocent little girl she used to be had died years before.

It was literally unthinkable, at this point, to explain to her parents, to her brothers, even to her friends, the extent of the lies of omission she had told them over the years, and how and why. She especially couldn't tell Harry. He would see it as a betrayal, she knew, her hiding this connection to his greatest enemy, his parents' murderer. So she had resolved never to tell them.

Not telling her parents things, especially things that would only make them worry, when they couldn't help, had become such a habit that she hadn't even been able to bring herself to tell them the full extent of what was happening at school, about the Resistance and why she needed to go back. They didn't know how the Death Eaters had tried to break her, wear her down to nothing.

They didn't know how she had spent months fomenting unrest and organizing demonstrations of unruliness and a thousand little pranks and bits of mischief to express the students' displeasure. They didn't know about the strain and stress of keeping the youngest students safe and endless spans of days without sleep, in detention from the moment class ended until it started again, and the scorn of her peers when the whole school was given only bread and water suppers for weeks at a time, their ire directed at her by the Carrows. They didn't know about the endless, increasingly severe individual punishments, taken as a matter of course – almost a matter of pride.

She had been their Phoenix, their symbol, according to Luna: the one who went down in flames, loud and bright and impossible to ignore, over and over, to show the rest of the school what they were fighting for; to show them it was _possible_ to fight and lose and not give up.

She was the one who had blown up the Muggle Studies classroom and taught her fellow sixth-years shield charms when they were supposed to be practicing curses in Dark Arts lessons. She was the one who had stood on the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall and dared their so-called professors to _crucio_ _her_ , instead of some big-mouthed second-year Ravenclaw, pissing himself in fear.

When they did, she had spat blood in their faces and dared them to do it again.

Her parents didn't know the details, but they could see the toll it had been taking on her. Out of the three of them leading the Opposition, the remnants of the DA, she was the one who had been the most visible, taken the most damage. It had been bad enough that they had kept her home after the Easter holiday. Her mother had cried when she saw Ginny's too-thin, haggard face, when she had winced at her overenthusiastic embrace.

Seeing her mother cry for her had been a worse torture than anything the Death Eaters had devised for her.

She knew that it would kill her mother if she died, that it would kill her that she couldn't protect her baby girl, but her baby girl was long dead, anyway.

Molly Weasley's baby girl, the girl who had been in love with a boy who had never existed (the real Harry Potter was so much more and so much less than the hero she had grown up believing in); who had been a poor, tomboy firstie, overwhelmed by Hogwarts and her less-than-perfect homelife and the disdain of her new peers; who had latched on to the only sympathetic voice in her life, shared all her secrets with him, let him take over her body and steal her life, truly had died in the Chamber of Secrets. She had rotted away over the months that followed, when there had been no help, no healing, only blame and self-loathing, and useless, too-little too-late familial concern.

The girl who went into the Chamber would not have recognized the girl who had emerged, the one who desperately maintained a façade of careless Weasley confidence hiding a festering core of hatred and terror and bone-deep knowledge that she had been tainted by evil, transformed into a monster hiding behind a child's face, infected by dreams of a boy in an orphanage, seducing her to sympathize with the creature who had turned her.

The girl who had emerged had nearly been eaten alive by guilt and obsession. She had spent nearly two years burning away every weakness she could find in herself, in her quest to ensure that she could never, _ever_ be hurt or used like that again. She had tried to be _good_ , tried to be the person she pretended to be, tried to avoid following Tom Riddle's path, even as she re-made herself in his image, borrowing his charm and cunning as she slowly recovered her reputation from the blows it had suffered that first year, and turning his cold objectivity on her own experiences as she worked through the trauma he had dealt her.

The naïve _child_ who had so-innocently welcomed evil into her soul was most certainly not the same young witch who had joined the student Army in her fourth year, resolving to fight and to live her life to the fullest, despite all the horror she had already suffered and her self-loathing and doubt; who had taught herself Occlumency with a few hints from her eldest brother, an illegal book, and a boggart to practice against; who objected fiercely when Luna Lovegood said they needed a martyr and looked to her, but stood up to defend a little first-year Gryffindor from their 'teachers' only a day later.

_That_ girl, the one she had spent years re-building from the ground up, couldn't _not_ fight.

There were lots of reasons. For her family, as she'd told her parents. For the Light. Because the Dark could not be allowed to overtake Magical Britain. Because there must be balance. For the muggles and muggleborns and the poor first-year students who had been traumatized over the course of this year. For Neville and Luna and all of the students, really, who had been dragged into a war that had been going on well before they were born. For Harry, who had been hunted his entire life. Because Voldemort was a monster who deserved to die for the pain he had already caused and to stop him from causing any more for the whole country and everyone she knew and loved. For everyone who had died in the first war, and everyone who had died in this one. But mostly she had to fight for herself.

She _had_ to be there, when he finally fell. She had to see the monster _he_ had become finally come to an _end_ – otherwise she was certain she would never quite believe he was gone.

These thoughts had chased each other endlessly through her mind, preoccupying her as she waited for the room to clear, but they melted away as soon as Harry had said that they needed her to leave. They had faded away into the background as she had run toward the fight, without even a pause for good luck or farewell. She left the Room of Requirement and sprinted down the nearest stair, headed toward the sounds of battle.

She wanted to fight, wanted to help – and now she was in the thick of things. Spells flying, the school falling to pieces all around her, blood and pain and people dying everywhere she looked.

She cast and cast and cast again: piercing hexes and bludgeoning jinxes; cutting curses and conjured lances of fire (fire had always been her element). After the year she had had, with her life on the line, there was no chance of her fucking around with bat bogies and body binds.

She ran and dodged, shielded. Hid. And then leapt out of hiding to curse some more, sending a bludgeoning jinx at a Death Eater who had just taken aim at Fleur (how childish her dislike of her sister-in-law seemed, now, in hindsight…), and deflecting his retaliatory strikes until he was hit by a stray killing curse, cast from down the corridor.

The only thought in her head, aside from the look on her mother's face, telling her that she was too young to fight, was that all of this, this battle, was so much _bigger_ than the fight at the Ministry, or the little fight the year before, when Dumbledore had died.

She had thought they were at war before, the last eight months (minus Christmas and the last two weeks, trapped at home and unable to help).

Now she realized that was only a cold state of stand-off.

It couldn't have been a real war, because if it had been, then she had no word for _this_.

It was pure chaos: there were no sides or fronts, but dozens of impromptu, one-on-one (or one-on-two or two-on-three) fights constantly circling, shifting and interrupting each other, the participants engaging and disengaging in ways the DA hadn't anticipated, hadn't trained for. Ambushes struck out of nowhere, with seventh-years, and a few of her fellow sixth-years, as well, using their knowledge of the castle to their advantage. Even the useless professors like Trelawney and Babbling were on the field, doing whatever they could to add to the madness.

Young faces, both students and unmasked Death Eaters, were running scared, both toward the fighting and away from it. She sneered at the cowards who ran away. She was terrified, too, but the fact that it was all so much bigger and more overwhelming than they had expected was no reason to turn their backs on it. Others, the hardened, older warriors, who had survived the last war, hunted their enemies down and incapacitated them with brutal efficiency. She knew they were thinking of the people they had lost, the last time around, and how important it was to make this stand, today, _final_. Magical Britain would never survive another ten-year war.

She channeled anger and fear into the darkest slicing curse she knew, hamstringing a masked madman who had cornered a pair of seventh-year Ravenclaws, pinning them down behind their own shields. He fell down a staircase and didn't get up.

She pressed on.

She needed to get to the center of things. That was where _Riddle_ was bound to be.

But he wasn't.

When she finally made her way to the heart of the fighting, it was only Death Eaters – the Lestranges and the other Azkaban escapees in the thick of it – and the defenders beating them back from Madam Pomfrey's makeshift infirmary in the Great Hall. Her father grabbed her and shoved her behind the line, through the doors, into relative safety, with a grim look that said they would be discussing her decision to leave the Room later, if they both survived. Momentarily lost, with no Death Eaters to curse, she spotted Lavender Brown, from the year above her, and Colin Creevey lying too-still on the floor, and then something that made her blood run cold – her family's distinctive red hair, being levitated through a side-door.

She walked closer, as though in a trance. Both ears. Fred. It was Fred. She fell to her knees beside his body, overcome with shock. She couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't – how could this be possible? And then there was someone – she couldn't put a name to the brown hair and grey eyes of the older Hufflepuff who was pulling her away, dragging her to assist the living, instructing her to cast first-aid charms on the physically-injured, freeing the better healers to deal with lingering curses.

She did as she was told, the spells almost automatic after months of dealing with the effects of the Carrows' 'teaching,' losing herself in the work until she heard Voldemort's voice, a high-pitched mockery of what had once been Riddle's smooth tenor, announcing from everywhere and nowhere his intentions to give them an hour to hand over Harry. Then there were others, more skilled than herself, there to assist, pushing her away, and she found herself kneeling with her family again, watching helplessly as her mother threw herself on Fred's body, and her father reached out to her, tears falling un-hindered from his own cheeks. George was lost. Completely and utterly lost. Hermione hugged her, but she hardly felt it.

Ginny didn't know how long they knelt there, but suddenly, she felt as though she could not bear to be there a second longer, staring at the body that was no longer her brother, and her family, unable to cope with his so-sudden loss. She had to do something – had to act. She rose robotically and ignored the others' attempts to pull her back, walking out of the Great Hall, and then out of the Entry Hall. She found Neville, and joined him in examining the fallen for any trace of life, ferrying those who had a chance back to the Hall, and casting the Mercy Spell on the rest. She found one of her roommates, Janine, who had been so horrible to her since her very first year, too far gone to save, and held her hand and lied to her as she crossed beyond the Veil, promising that she would be okay, that the fighting was over.

It was for her, at least.

She had been at the front of the crowd when Hagrid brought Harry's body back from the woods, herded along by the Death Eaters, felt something break within her, even as she heard her own voice shrieking his name. It wasn't only that she loved him – because she still did, even if she doubted whether they had ever had a chance, as a couple. He had been their best hope – the Chosen One. She drew her wand, readying herself to throw everything she had at the monster standing before them, to prove that they would not, even now, give in to him, but Neville beat her to it, charging forward.

She watched in horror as he was forced under the Sorting Hat, and it was set alight, and then astonishment as he pulled from its depths the Sword of Gryffindor, and hacked through the neck of the thrice-cursed snake, Nagini. The fight resumed at once, the defenders attacking with a new level of reckless desperation. Even if they were doomed, they, like she, would not bow quietly before the victorious murderer.

Surrender was _never_ an option.

She had told herself that every night since she got off the train in September. She had promised herself when she returned to the occupied Castle that she would die before she bowed her head again to _Riddle_ , _especially_ by fucking proxy, and she had renewed that vow as she had marched through the tunnel from the Hog's Head. She would keep it, if it was, as it very well might be, the last thing she did.

She threw herself into the heart of the battle as it resumed, running with Luna to Hermione's aid – the older girl was fighting like a demon, like Ginny hadn't known she was able, maddened with grief, battling Bellatrix, but she was clearly out-matched. Even the three of them together were out-matched.

She ducked under a Cruciatus, and then stepped aside to avoid an incoming Killing Curse from the battle off to her right, calculating the trajectory of the spell as instinctively as she did the movement of a Quaffle or a Snitch.

She spared half a thought hoping that someone else could conjure a solid shield to catch it, but dismissed the threat – it would pass her by, if only by inches – concentrating on the pattern of _pierce, fire, cut, bludgeon, pierce_ , fast and faster, each movement and trailing syllable leading naturally into the next. She only partially registered a high-pitched shout of _"GINNY!"_ as someone else's spell collided with the bright green curse, combining and deflecting directly at her, too close to dodge.

It hurt – oh _God_ , it hurt! Like being splinched everywhere and dying all at once, as though her body and her soul were tearing themselves apart as the world blinked out and re-formed around her.

She fell to the ground. Someone was screaming: a shrill, tortured sound. The rest of the battle had gone curiously quiet, and oh, wait, that was her. She closed her mouth, breathing too-fast through her nose as she tried to handle the pain, tried to think through it. Someone cast… _something_ on her, some spell dragging her out of consciousness.

As the pain became a distant thing, she hoped, desperately, that she would wake up again.

For all her determination to die fighting rather than live in a world ruled by Tom Fucking Riddle, she hadn't quite believed she would – not until this very second. She somehow hadn't quite _believed_ , even after they told her Harry was dead, that they would lose, that she would _actually_ die.

She didn't want it to end like this.


	2. 1979

She did.

Wake up, that was.

Slowly.

Painfully.

To the sound of an older, male voice, somewhat strained.

"She just appeared in the Great Hall, looking like she'd been through a battle. She had her wand, but it is not registered, I'm afraid, and there was nothing identifiable on her. Madam Pomfrey managed to patch her together, but she will need time to recover her strength."

"Why not take her to St. Mungo's?" a young, female voice objected. "You know I'm not fully qualified, yet, sir! It's one thing to patch up aurors and Order members, but –"

"Miss Evans, if there was any other way… Certain sixth and seventh-years were already expressing an interest in our mysterious visitor's origins, you see. It was of paramount importance to remove her to safety at once. She hasn't even regained consciousness – I could hardly leave her defenseless at St. Mungo's or unattended at one of the other Safehouses."

"What about the Waypoint? They have proper healers there!"

"And if it turns out that she is _not_ sympathetic to the cause?"

The woman – Evans – grumbled a bit, too quietly for Ginny to hear. The old man waited patiently. Eventually Evans bit out, " _Fine_." Then she shouted, "Oi, Becca! Make up a room – long term patient!"

"Okay!" was the strangely echoing reply.

"Very gracious of you, my dear," the old man said. "Now, if you will excuse me, I've other matters to attend to this morning…"

"Of course, sir," the woman answered, and then added, a few seconds later: "He's gone. You can stop pretending to be asleep, now."

Ginny groaned, and pried an eye open. She was lying on an examination table, in a large, dark, open space – possibly a warehouse. There was a light above her, and she could just make out the witch in the shadows that surrounded it. The stranger, Evans, was holding her at wandpoint. She wore healer's robes, cut for ease of movement, but not the lime green of St. Mungo's. With her face hidden in the dark, she looked very intimidating.

"Who are you, and how did you get into Hogwarts?" she asked coldly.

"Huh?" Ginny attempted to feign stupidity. It wasn't that hard, considering she had no idea what was going on.

"Don't give me that shite," the witch glared, her eyes beginning to glow a disturbing, Killing Curse green, and her wand-tip white with an un-cast spell. "Dumbledore's left you in my care, and I _know_ you were awake when he said _he_ didn't know what side you're on, so you have ten seconds to convince me you're not going to kill anyone in their sleep or betray this safehouse to old Snakeface."

"Or else what?" Ginny spat, fumbling for her wand. It was missing, but she still wasn't about to be intimidated, Order of the Phoenix member or not.

"Or else you'll find out _exactly_ why Healers are required to take an Oath of Nonmalfeasance!" Evans stepped forward, threateningly, into the light.

The younger girl felt herself blanch at the sight of auburn hair, and too-familiar green eyes. "You're Lily Potter," she said, faintly. The young witch – only two or three years older than Ginny – looked _exactly_ like the statue in Godric's Hollow, except for the full-life color and the distinct differences in expression. The statue was a bit beatific, and the witch before her was decidedly _not_.

"It's Evans! And I _know_ who _I_ am! Who the hell are you?"

She was pretty sure that the witch wasn't lying. It was something in her sheer indignance about the name. It was in _that_ moment that the fact that Potter – Evans – had casually mentioned Dumbledore as well, fully registered. _He_ had been the old, male voice, earlier. He wasn't dead, and neither were the Potters. But if _that_ was true, it meant that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong in that last battle. Ginny's confidence faltered. "Ginny – Ginevra Weasley. I – I'm on your side – Dumbledore's side! The Order of the Phoenix."

Lily Evans' suspicious glare didn't lessen. If anything, it intensified, with an added hint of confusion. "You're far too young to be an Order fighter. Who are you, really? And how did you get into Hogwarts?"

"I – I'm not a fighter. Not really. My parents are members – Arthur and Molly. I was a student – but I am on your side, I swear!"

"And Hogwarts? I won't ask again!"

"I don't _know_! I was fighting Bellatrix, and then there was a Killing Curse, and someone deflected it, and it combined with _whatever_ it was, and hit me even though I should've been clear, and then everything blinked out and – I don't _know_!" she repeated herself helplessly.

The older witch lowered her wand, summoning a stool for herself out of the gloom. "Fuck."

"You – you believe me?"

"Veritor's charm. Lets me see if patients are telling me the truth about symptoms."

"I could be an occlumens."

"You could be, but you're not occluding. I _know_ what _that_ looks like, and you're far too agitated. But Arthur and Molly Weasley aren't _that_ much older than me, and you knew about my engagement, even though we've been keeping it quiet, and I'd _know_ if you had been at Hogwarts with me… which suggests that either you aren't the person you believe you are or…" she trailed off pensively.

"Time travel," Ginny said abruptly.

There were _horror stories_ about time travel, especially when it was going wrong, where the hero (victim) got lost in alternate time-streams, or re-made the universe by ruining the continuity of things that ought to have happened. Fred and George ( _Try not to think about Fred._ ) used to try to scare her with highly embellished versions of the Emmet Brown story, and when she was about eight, she'd had more than one nightmare where she accidentally erased herself and her brothers from existence thanks to Percy telling her about Eloise Mintumble. The very first rule of time travel was to not draw attention to yourself, not to tell people you were a time traveler – that was what always started the horrible chain reaction of events in those stories. But if Lily Evans was only a couple years older than she was, she had to have somehow fallen back in time, and she didn't know nearly enough to get home, and it would be awfully hard to get help if she couldn't even tell people what the problem was.

Evans raised a skeptical eyebrow, then said, "It's 1979. The third of May, 1979."

Panic rose up as Ginny's suspicion was confirmed, threatening to close over her head, until the older witch cast some sort of calming charm on her. Apparently Evans felt that her reaction was sufficient confirmation of the situation.

"Guess that explains how you knew I'm engaged to Potter. And about the Order… yeah, I suppose it fits," she mused, then said lightly, her whole demeanor changing in an instant, from suspicious to businesslike: "Let's start over. You're in an Order of the Phoenix Safehouse, Safehouse Four. My name is Lily Evans. I'm a trainee healer. I'm in charge of this safehouse, which is staffed by Pandora Sage-Willow, another healer, as well as two muggleborn refugees, Jessie and Becca. They live here, with me. Jess is studying healing, and Becca helps out as she can. You'll be staying with us until Dumbledore tells us otherwise, I suppose. Dora went home to sleep, but she'll be back this afternoon. We mostly deal with emergency overflow from St. Mungo's and Order Aurors working outside their purview on special assignment, and a bit of… research, on the side."

"I – I'm Ginny Weasley," she stuttered slightly. "I… I don't know how much I should say…" she trailed off, shaking despite the calming spell.

Evans grinned. "Tell you what – when Dora gets in, we'll work out what's up with the timeline, and let you know, eh?"

"Y-you can do that? How?"

The witch shrugged, a knowing look in her ( _Harry's_ ) eyes. ( _Don't think about Harry, either._ ) "I have my ways," she said, in obvious imitation of Dumbledore. And then she smirked. "Bit of scrying on Dora's part, and I'll ask the Infernal Power if that doesn't work."

"The… Infernal Power? You're…" Shock must be setting in again, because she could have _sworn_ that _Lily Potter_ , famed for her maternal sacrifice and pure _lightness,_ had just implied that she was a Black witch.

"Still one of the good guys, or so they tell me," she winked.

"Um… right…"

"Here," the older witch said, handing Ginny her wand.

"You trust me?"

"Sure. Would you rather I didn't?" Evans' grin was blindingly sincere.

"Well no, but… you're at war! And you've hardly _met_ me!"

Evans just shrugged. "I'm an _excellent_ judge of character. Now, let's get you settled in. Hey, Becca! Jess! Come meet your new roomie! And hit the lights!" she shouted, then explained: "We put a sensor-limitation on the light-triggers so we could re-use the same key-words for different enchantments. If I call from here, it'll just turn _this_ light off." She gestured to the orb suspended above Ginny.

Ginny didn't care about the lights. She tuned out Evans' rambling. Fred and Harry and God knew who else were dead, and she had fallen back in time, so most of her family wasn't even _born_ yet, and she was still in a war – she had _far_ more important things to worry about. Her breathing felt too fast, and her hands were _still_ shaking.

The enchantments in question came slowly to life as a pair of teenagers made their way out of a partitioned-off area into the main warehouse.

"This is Rebecca Schaefer and Jessie Jamieson." Plain, mousy Rebecca was only a little shorter than Evans, but Ginny would have put her at about fourteen. Jessie was a tall, broad-shouldered black boy who looked closer to her own age.

"Guys, this is Ginevra Weasley, she'll be staying with us… indefinitely," Evans shrugged.

The younger girl grinned. "Hey! Nice to meet you, Ginevra. Call me Becca."

"Ginny, or Gin," Ginny said, out of habit. Why her mum couldn't have just called her 'Guinevere,' properly, she would never know.

"Welcome to the Four-Oh-Seven-Seven, Gin," Jessie said, waving at her and then hiding a yawn behind the same hand. "What's on for today, boss-lady?" he asked, turning to the witch who was clearly in charge.

"It's Thursday."

The boy groaned. "I _hate_ brewing!"

The girl elbowed him in the ribs. "I'll do it if you want to take care of Moody and Bones."

"No, Becca, you need to take stock of the inventory before Dora gets back. Start with general stores and potions – McKinnon and Black raided the store-room last night to re-supply Two, so we need to see what needs to be replaced. And then ingredients, taking into account the brewing we'll need to do today."

The girl looked briefly disappointed, but then said, hopefully, "Does that mean _you're_ taking care of the old wanker?"

"Yeah, I'll look after him until Dora comes in, and then I'll help with the re-stock for a bit." Jessie, who had looked even more put out at the notion that their stores had been depleted, nodded gratefully at the eldest witch. "But you know I have that meeting with the goblins this afternoon," she continued, and his frown returned.

"Oh, thank God," the younger girl sighed, then waved at Ginny before wandering back toward the doorway they had come from. Jessie followed her with a quick, "See you later."

"Hey, Beck – what room?" Lily – somehow it was easier to think of her as 'Lily' after seeing her interact with the younger kids – called after her.

"The one across from the kitchen!" she yelled back.

Lily levitated Ginny to a small, private room otherwise reminiscent of the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, chattering about the file Madam Pomfrey had sent on her various injuries and the treatment programme she would have to undergo, most of it to make up for the systematic physical and magical torture, and deprivation of both food and sleep she had suffered over the months she'd been at school.

Ginny couldn't concentrate on her words, so she largely ignored them, her mind locked in a panic-spiral, kept in check only by the knowledge that she couldn't immediately do _anything_ to fix this. There was nothing for her to do but wait until this 'Dora' arrived. The healer gave her a series of foul-tasting potions to swallow, then cast a sleeping charm on her. She left as Ginny's eyelids began to grow heavy, promising to wake her when they knew more about exactly how much she ought to be able to tell them.

xXx

Ginny woke again, to light humming, occasionally interrupted by female voices whispering. For half a second, she thought she was back in her dorm, with Sam and Elaine, who always chatted quietly as they readied themselves for class, before the rest of the room rose. For a brief, shining moment, she imagined that the whole of her sixth year had been a particularly awful dream. Then she opened her eyes.

"Mrs. Lovegood?" Luna's mother was impossible to mistake for anyone else. She had prematurely silver hair, even now, and silvery eyes, too, as though all the color had been washed out of her. It was hard to say how much older she was than Lily, between the hair and the fact that she gave off an air of serene wisdom to rival Dumbledore at his best. She couldn't have been more than twenty, though, if Ginny remembered the timeline correctly.

Her laugh was exactly like Luna's. "So Xeno and I _do_ get married? I'll be sure to tell him yes when he finally proposes," she grinned. "Pandora Sage-Willow. A pleasure to meet you, little time traveler."

Ginny flushed and introduced herself, struggling to sit up. The silver-haired witch transfigured the bed around her, supporting her efforts, and Ginny gave her a grateful smile.

Lily took over the conversation with a bright, "Okay!" and a quiet clap of her hands. "So here's where things stand, as well as we can figure: You travelled back in time to a point in the direct past of your own timeline. Everything from the beginning of time, until now, is the same for all of us. The timeline we're in now is slowly diverging from your own simply by virtue of your being here, us using resources on you and so on, instead of doing what we would have done if you'd never showed up, but if we send you back soon enough, before you manage to create too many ripples, it will heal itself over. We can all swear each other to secrecy, or something, and minimize the effect, so instead of actually branching and having different long-term effects, the two time streams rejoin each other and continue on as one.

"The trick is, it takes a _lot_ of power to send someone through time, and I don't think we have a great chance of replicating and exactly reversing the exact accident that brought you here – there were traces of two different curses on you. One was the killing curse, obviously, and my best guess is that the other was a curse meant to seal you in a pocket universe, outside of time. Since the killing curse breaks bonds between the soul and the body, and that sort of time/space spell alters your relationship to the rest of the universe… weird shite happened. I _might_ be able to narrow down the actual spells used, or replicate the effect directly with enough time, but we're talking literally years, and then we'd need to find someone to actually reify the counter-curse, and, well, Sev's out of the question anymore, and –"

"Lily Irene, you're rambling," Pandora interrupted her.

"Erm… sorry. Right. So the next best option to get you home is to put together a ritual. But part of the reason it would take so much power to send you back when it only took two battle-castable curses to send you here, is that the Powers likely want you to be here, or some of them, at least. Otherwise you'd've just died, I'm pretty sure. Because the likelihood of an accident like that having _these particular effects_ is about nil. Depending on which Powers were responsible for you washing up in our timeline, the costs of finding your way back to the proper place in time and then actually _moving_ you there, are likely to be steeper than any of us are willing to pay."

"What kind of price are we talking about?" Ginny asked, hardly believing that she was even considering using ritual magic to get home. There was a reason ritual magic was all but forbidden in Magical Britain. It was _dangerous_. But it was also _powerful,_ and she couldn't not _try_ , could she?

Lily shrugged. "Your ability to see or hear, your capacity for love, the ability to have children or do magic, anywhere from days to years of your life… it depends on the Power, really. And then some of the rituals have _different_ costs if you decide to sacrifice someone else, instead of something of yours. But if this is running counter to the designs of one or more of them, it's going to be something steep, no matter what. I don't know of any rituals specifically designed to take you forward in time. We, Dora and I, could probably pull something together, but again, it will take time, and the longer you're here, the larger the offshoot-bud of the new universe grows, and the more difficult it will be to send you back to your proper time _line_ , and not just to your proper _time_ , thus the higher the cost will be."

"So it's impossible, then?" she asked angrily. The only alternative to anger was crying in frustration, and she was trying to hold it together in front of the older witches.

"Nothing is impossible, Ginevra," Pandora said soothingly. "But the longer you are here, the more difficult the choice will be to return, and you will be here for some time, regardless."

"What about – what about the Department of Mysteries? Or Dumbledore? They have to know _something_! There has to be a way!"

"They… might, but…" Lily said rather reluctantly, then hesitated.

"But?" Ginny prodded her.

"But involving more people," ("Especially important, influential people," Lily inserted.) "Will inevitably widen the gulf between the universes more quickly, Ginevra. It would, again, take time to determine who might be able to assist in returning you without involving so many people that the costs of their involvement are not greater than the benefits they would provide."

" _And_ in order to do that arithmancy, you would have to tell me a _lot_ more about the future, which very well might change things, too, because we're at war, and I'm not at all sure that I would be able to stop that knowledge from affecting the way I act and react to things, which could change the trajectory of this timeline in a major way. The only person I know who _might_ be able to do that is on the other side, now, and he was always pants at arithmancy, anyway."

"So… we can't tell anyone else?" Ginny was struggling. She had some vague knowledge of how rituals worked from Riddle's memories, but not enough to keep up with the others. It wasn't exactly the sort of thing that was taught to schoolchildren, and most books on ritual magic were banned, so she didn't have the theoretical knowledge to fill in the blanks behind the memories. How Lily, and apparently Pandora, too, knew anything about them was something she dearly wanted to know, but it was a question for another time.

The other redhead shrugged again. "It's probably best if we don't, assuming you want to go home. If you decide to stay here, I guess it will depend on who you are and what you know. I mean, if you really are on our side, I assume you'll want to help us kill the Dark Wanker. I imagine there's all sorts of considerations about who to give information to, balancing effectiveness against changing the future too much and altering the timeline so that your information is out of date, you know, and if word gets back to the Bugger Boys that you're from the future, you'll be a bigger target than the Prewett twins."

"Oh my God, Uncle Fabian and Uncle Gideon – they're still alive!" she said without thinking, then realized she probably shouldn't have. "Fuck! Pretend you didn't hear that!"

Lily laughed, and Pandora gave her a sad smile. "It is no secret that most of us are likely to die before this war is over, Ginevra," the older witch said.

Ginny nodded, but her mind was whirling. She should at least _try_ to go back, no matter the cost. She knew she should. It would kill her family to lose both her and Fred. But it really did sound as if that cost would be something she didn't think she could live with giving up. If she managed it, she wouldn't necessarily be the same person they had lost, anyway. And it would take time to figure out what the cost would be, and she didn't know if she could stand not telling anyone anything important in the meanwhile, to keep from diverging the timeline too much.

On the other hand, if she stayed here, she could help them. She could finish the war for real, ten years early, and maybe save a few lives in the process. Fred wouldn't die in battle, and Harry – Harry wouldn't either, because she would make sure that everyone knew about the horcruxes. Even if Lily and James Potter had to die to take out Voldemort, she would make sure he was finished in the ten years that followed. She couldn't be Ginny Weasley, anymore, closer in age to her parents than her brothers or her future self, wouldn't be Harry's friend or girlfriend or whatever they were, but they could be happy, here, in this universe. That might make up for the suffering her death or disappearance or whatever would cause in her own world, even if they never knew.

And she could crush Tom Riddle like a bug beneath her heel, once and for all, which might make it up to _her._

Lily and Pandora were bickering over something when she nodded decisively – or rather, Lily was bickering, and Pandora was calmly refuting whatever points she was making. She cleared her throat, and they turned to her as one. Lily raised an expectant eyebrow, and Pandora smiled knowingly.

"I'll stay."

Pandora squeezed her hand warmly, and said, "I'm sorry," before she left, which nearly brought Ginny to tears again.

Lily grinned, a faintly predatory expression, but all she said was, "You should eat, and rest. I'll have one of the kids bring you a tray, and come check on you in a few hours."

xXx

It was almost too easy to get used to life in 1979. Ginny spent the first week or so on bedrest, dutifully drinking healing potion after ridiculously disgusting healing potion, sitting still as variously uncomfortable charms were cast, and sleeping. It seemed as though she had not slept at all for the past year, given how her body craved unconsciousness, now.

She dreamed of Fred and Harry, of her parents and all the secrets she had kept from everyone over the years, and spent many of her waking hours alternating between trying to come to terms with the loss of her life, and trying not to think about it. She cried, silently, to herself, more than she ever had before in her life, and then hated herself for wallowing in self-pity when there was nothing she could do about anything.

No one pressed her for the details of her story.

From the occasional dropped comment or hastily changed subject, she suspected Lily had threatened Becca and Jessie in order to keep them from asking too many questions about their 'long-term patient.' Even the older witches had refrained from asking her about the future, aside from Lily's rather blasé comment that unless she knew something that they needed to act on immediately, the future could wait at least a few days. (From the look she had given Pandora when she said it, Ginny suspected that the silver-haired witch had somehow threatened her friend in turn.)

Instead of talking about herself and her own war, Ginny spent a great deal of time reading "recent" back-issues of the Quibbler and the Prophet to get her bearings, and working out the details of her cover-story. This she dutifully repeated to Dumbledore when he came to visit, still on bedrest. Lily had been thrilled that Ginny already knew Occlumency, and Ginny had been disappointed, but not surprised, when Dumbledore attempted to legilimize her immediately upon their introduction. She had repelled the probe, of course, but it had solidified her determination not to reveal her true story to him, and done nothing to allay his suspicions of her, though Pandora had managed to mollify him with a few subtle implications of mental trauma, consistent with her story.

Ginny told him that her name was Jennifer Catherine Williams – Jenny was close enough to her true name that it wouldn't matter if anyone miss-spoke in front of him (or anyone else who wasn't in the know). She was a muggleborn, seventeen, with British ex-pat parents who had taken her to France nearly ten years prior. They had been warned by an Obliviator who came to cover up a bout of accidental magic that the situation in Magical Britain was looking grim for muggleborns and their families.

She knew enough about Beauxbatons and Magical France (Frankia) thanks to Fleur's constant reminiscing about her own school days that she was fairly confident she could bluff her way through a conversation with most British wizards on the subject. Her sister-in-law had also taught her a bit of French (rather involuntarily) over the summer (which now seemed like a lifetime ago), and corrected her (mocking) accent until it was 'good enough for an Eenglish witch, I suppose.' It had been infuriating at the time, but she was grateful now. Since 'Jenny' had British parents who spoke English at home, she doubted anyone would question it.

Jenny had run away from home and 'returned' to Magical Britain when she turned seventeen because she felt it was her duty as an English Muggleborn to fight against the Thief Lord. (Riddle's French pseudonym had always amused Fleur, because she thought it silly that a Dark Lord would name himself a petty thief, an idea which Ginny had taken wholesale for Jenny's character. She personally, knowing what she did of how he had actually managed to evade death, found it a lot less funny.)

Jenny's parents disagreed with that belief, and thought that she ought to stay in France, where it was safe, but she had come back anyway, and there was little chance that she could return to them now without putting them in grave danger. She hadn't quite realized the extent of the situation, and fell into an ambush almost immediately on reaching London – a trap that sent her to Hogwarts and seriously injured her in the process. As far as she and the Healers could 'tell,' it was some sort of attempt to bypass the school's anti-apparition wards. They 'suspected' that it would be considered unsuccessful, since she was so damaged by being pulled through them that she had been hospitalized at once. Any Death Eaters making a similar attempt would doubtless suffer the same fate.

After they had fended off Dumbledore's initial questions, they had used a lightening potion on her hair, until it was barely strawberry-blonde, rather than the distinctive Weasley-red (her orange hair had always been her least-favorite feature, anyway), and used an illusion to hide the Prewett chin, making her face seem just a _bit_ more pointed, and her mouth slightly smaller, "to throw off anyone who managed to capture a pensieve memory of her initial appearance." The real reason, of course, was to hide her true identity from her still-living relatives or members of the other Sacred Twenty-Eight, who _would_ recognize her most distinctive family features. Dumbledore, who wasn't a blood-obsessed idiot himself and wasn't looking for a Weasley-Prewett child, did not seem to be unduly suspicious.

She had steeled herself against reacting the first time she saw one of her parents or uncles, but it hardly mattered: the first time she saw any of them, they were in no state to notice how a misplaced French teenager was reacting to their presence. In fact, she was fairly certain that even Jessie and Becca, who _knew_ she wasn't really muggleborn, thought she was only a bit woozy at the sight of all the blood: her Uncles Fabian and Gideon, along with several other Order fighters, were brought in suffering from a 'slight altercation' with a pack of Death Eaters, out on a raid.

The Corpse Munchers had apparently decided that it was more important to take out two of the Order's highest-profile warriors instead of attacking an innocent muggleborn's parents, which had suited the Prewett twins down to the ground. There had been a 'bit of a scuffle,' with no serious casualties on the Order's side, though they were all rather worse for the wear. The twins had flirted shamelessly with Lily as she patched them up and checked for lingering curses – at least until Marlene McKinnon showed up to fuss over them. They tried cracking jokes as she lectured them about getting themselves hurt, and made it clear that she should see the other guys, but Ginny was certain she overheard the blonde auror telling the wizards that she would be sleeping at James and Sirius' flat until her lovers pulled their heads out of their collective arsehole.

Her uncles' personalities reminded Ginny of Fred and George, and they had the same stockiness, though their shared face looked more like Percy's. It had been all she could do not to break down in tears as she was nearly overwhelmed by memories of her older brothers, until the fact that they were apparently in a triadic relationship registered. At that point, she blushed furiously – for all she might joke about Fred and George being 'inseparable,' that wasn't the sort of thing decent people _did_ – and got caught up in wondering whether her mother knew, and how _she_ had taken the news if she did.

Thankfully, she hadn't yet had to see her parents. According to Pandora, neither of them were actively fighting, with five children at home, and she was therefore unlikely to run into them at the Healers' safehouse. Their role came down, mostly, to Arthur passing information he gathered at the Ministry, and Molly guarding the Burrow as another safehouse. They were slowly helping muggleborns out of the country, hiding them with the ghoul in the attic if anyone outside the Order stopped by, but it was best they had as little contact with the rest of the Order as possible, for the sake of their cover.

She _had_ met most of the younger set of Auror Order members, as they filtered through in the days after she was finally allowed out of bed. The most common visitors were James Potter and Sirius Black, which was, perhaps, not surprising.

James _looked_ an awful lot like Harry, but his confident swagger reminded her more of Draco Malfoy, and his hyper-seriousness when it came to being Lord Potter reminded her of Edwin Grey or Ernest Macmillan. After talking to him for less than half an hour, the resemblance between father and son had started to fade into the background. He and Lily were, indeed, engaged, and planning their wedding for Midsummer, less than a month and a half away.

Sirius accompanied his best friend everywhere, even though he was obviously unhappy about the whole situation, and had nothing constructive to add to their wedding discussions. He didn't seem to like Lily very much at all. He flirted as shamelessly with Ginny as he did with Pandora and Jessie (who never seemed to notice, which was funny in and of itself) and amused Becca with tales of daring fights and Hogwarts pranks, but unless James was right there, Lily was only ever offered cutting quips and cool glares. James didn't seem to notice. Lily must have done, but she never said anything.

Ginny found him fascinating, not only for the strange dynamic between the trio, but also because he was both so similar to and so different from the Sirius she had known at Grimmauld Place. Out of all the people she had met here, he was the only one she clearly remembered from her own time. Most of them had been killed before she was born, and even Pandora, who had survived the war, had died in an accident before she left for Hogwarts. Unfortunately, she had the impression that he didn't quite trust her, even if he did like her. Rather the opposite of Lily, whom he obviously trusted, despite clearly antagonizing her at every opportunity. She caught him giving her suspicious looks out of the corner of her eye, and he pressed just a little more than any of the others when it came to her cover story. She wished she could just tell him the truth, but one of the things he had in common with his older self was an air of barely-contained, impulsive recklessness, and she couldn't be sure of what he would do or say if she did.

He might, for example, tell James, who would almost certainly tell Dumbledore.

It hadn't taken very long for Ginny to realize that the Healers – Lily and Pandora – didn't particularly like the Headmaster. He stopped by once a week or so to check up on them, which they found very annoying, and they didn't entirely trust him. Pandora gave her a vague answer about free thought when she asked why, and Lily had given her a cynical grin and called him an old hypocrite who wouldn't hesitate to abuse his power over his students if it suited him, but refused to elaborate.

The Potters, on the other hand, had long been allied with the Headmaster, and James had been raised to respect him without question. He was one of Dumbledore's favorites, and would doubtless think that the best course of action, if he knew that they had a potential source of information on how the war would go, would be to tell the Headmaster.

That, Ginny had decided, lying in her bed that first week and trying to decide what she should say about the future, and to whom, would be a Bad Thing. Her own feelings regarding the Headmaster were complex. She could sympathize with James' perspective. Until she had reached Hogwarts and been tainted by Riddle's diary, she would never have _dreamed_ of not trusting him. He had been kind enough afterward, but not terribly supportive, more concerned with keeping the details of the Chamber of Secrets incident under wraps than with the mental well-being of her twelve-year-old self. He had, effectively, swept the whole thing under a rug, and left her to deal with the aftermath on her own.

After she had achieved some degree of competency with Occlumency, she had realized that he used legilimency on the students all the time, which was just _wrong_ , and she knew that he had to have done it to Riddle the first time they met. She couldn't help but wonder whether Riddle would have become Voldemort if Dumbledore hadn't been so antagonistic toward him from the start. She hated him with an undying passion, but even she had to admit that Dumbledore hadn't exactly treated him fairly, based on his actions. He _was_ a horrible, cold, sadistic child, but Dumbledore only knew that because of the legilimency.

Even if she could excuse _those_ things, she didn't think she could excuse the fact that he had apparently sent Harry, along with Ron and Hermione, to hunt for Horcruxes without even knowing _what_ the objects were, let alone _where_ they were. And even if she did tell him about the future, she still didn't think she could trust him enough to explain what she knew about Tom Riddle, and how – for the same reasons she had mistrusted him before. If anything, it was even _more_ suspicious that a time-traveler would just happen to have that knowledge. And that was the important part of all this, really: she had to find the horcruxes and destroy them – find some way to make Riddle stay dead.

She had, eventually, decided to tell the Healers everything, so they could help her think of who else should be told what. She simply didn't know enough about these people and the details of their war to figure it out herself.


	3. The Story (Part 1)

On the fifteenth of May, the thirteenth night Ginny had been in 1979, Safehouse Four was quiet. There were no overnight patients except for Ginny herself, and everything was, for the moment, stocked up. Pandora had come over for dinner, and was keeping an eye on things and teaching the three younger teens how to identify and (theoretically) neutralize cursed wounds. It was a very interesting lecture – one which Ginny couldn't help but feel she could have used about a year before. Lily was out, finishing up a twelve-hour shift at St. Mungo's. She was still working on her Healer's Apprenticeship. The shift ran late, as they tended to do, but the trainee healer in question arrived back shortly after eight, and Jess and Becca took this as their cue to wander off, debating the best way to actually try to test their understanding of the theory.

"Do you think I should tell them that they should just curse each other?" Lily asked, with a wry smile, catching part of their conversation as they walked away.

"Certainly not," Pandora chided. "Not everyone is as ruthlessly practical as you and Severus Snape, Lily Irene."

She smirked. "It builds character."

Pandora raised a very unimpressed eyebrow at her friend's snark. "We both know that you do not actually consider yourself to be a good role model for young wizards," she pointed out. Lily shrugged, and Pandora continued: "In any case, I suspect that there will be more than enough un-critically wounded for them to practice on in the days to come."

"Do you know something I don't?" Ginny asked the silver-haired witch, though most of her attention was on Lily. She was growing warier of the future Mrs. Potter with every passing day. She was incredibly driven and efficient in a way that reminded Ginny a bit of Hermione, but there were certain things that seemed… _off_ about her, like the way her whole personality could shift on a knut, depending on who else was in the room, or the little details like this, dropped in passing. And who actually learned healing by intentionally casting curses on themselves and their friends? It would be effective, yes, but it was _insanely_ reckless. What if you couldn't work out the counter in time? The overall effect was somewhat disturbing. It was safe to say that the real Lily Evans bore little resemblance to the woman Ginny had grown up hearing stories about.

"Many things, Ginevra Phyllis," the elder witch answered lightly, before adding, more seriously, "but if you mean regarding our future patients, no. It is simply the balance of probability, given our usual work-load here. This has been a quiet week."

That was saying a lot, because this was the first time since Ginny had decided to just tell the Healers everything that they had had an evening 'off.' Normally there were potions to be brewed, spells to be practiced, lectures to hear, research to be done, supplies to be inventoried or distributed or mysteriously 'acquired', food to make, rooms to clean… the list of chores was endless, and unlike at Grimmauld Place, Ginny was certain the Healers weren't just coming up with tasks to keep the three younger residents busy.

They had had at least one 'uncritically injured' patient to heal every night since she had arrived, and more seriously wounded, overnight patients twice. Just a few hours before, Marlene McKinnon and her partner had stopped by for a curse-check. It wouldn't do for them to show up at the Aurory trailing dark magic from an unauthorized Order mission. Even now, Jess and Becca were off somewhere debating how to practice counter-curses. It seemed that Lily's fierce obsessiveness and Pandora's serene relentlessness had rubbed off on them despite their youth in the form of a bone deep determination to be useful, to contribute. Or maybe that was just the fact that they were muggleborn, and therefore targets in this war – a much more vicious, open struggle than the one she had known in her home time, at least according to the papers.

"You're thinking something," Lily noted, plonking a bowl of stew on the table across from them, and kicking her feet up on a spare chair. "What's up?"

"You were friends with _Severus Snape_ ," Ginny said, after taking a moment to reign in her wandering thoughts. Thinking on the murderous headmaster made her scowl, but at least it was pertinent to the topic she needed to discuss with the Healers – her knowledge of the future, and how best to use it.

The redhead actually laughed, though her eyes were not amused. "You know him? Glad to know he survived then. Yeah, we grew up together, but, well… we had to choose sides, and the Death Eaters weren't about to let him go, and I couldn't really justify signing up to help with xenocide, especially when I was in the target population, so yeah. We haven't talked in a while. But you were thinking something before that. What was it?"

She _had_ been deliberately waiting to talk to them, but she hadn't expected either of them to come out so blatantly and ask. She took a deep breath. "I've been thinking about what you said, about how I should think about what I know, and decide who to tell," she explained, looking from one to another. Pandora nodded, looking at her too-intently. Lily absent-mindedly slurped at her spoon, but nodded as well. "And, well, the thing is, I don't really know _who_ to tell, or how much. So, um… if you have the time, I was thinking you both might swear yourselves to secrecy, and then I could tell you everything, and we can all decide what needs to be done."

"Of course, Ginevra Phyllis," Pandora nodded, drawing her wand fluidly. Ginny was slightly taken aback: she had expected them to need to think about it before making any sort of vow – especially Pandora, who was by far the less impulsive of the two. "I, Pandora Sage-Willow, do hereby swear, upon my tongue, that I shall not speak nor write nor intentionally communicate in any way without her permission whatsoever Ginevra Phyllis Weasley communicates to me in confidence. Upon my hands, I shall not act intentionally on any such information without her permission, unless I am given to know it from some other source, and upon my honor, I shall not willingly betray her trusted secrets. Three times three I so swear, before Magic and the moon, so mote it be."

A silver spark appeared at the tip of her wand, and split into two, flowing through the air to alight at the crown of Ginny's head as well as Pandora's. She nodded her acceptance, and could feel it sinking into her magic, identifying her as the one who set the permission which was conditional in the vow. Lily repeated it, with somewhat more conventional language, though the intent seemed similar. Then she cast a silent series of privacy charms around them, concealing their conversation from anyone who might overhear, and Ginny, frantically trying to remember the proper response when someone offered a vow of secrecy, told them that the rest of their conversation should be considered 'confidential,' and that they had her permission to discuss any of it with each other and anyone who already knew, just in case that mattered.

"Go on, fill us in," Lily grinned, still working on her dinner.

It was more difficult to get started than she had expected. "I – well… My first year at Hogwarts, I was given a diary… No. That's not right. Back in 1981… No, that's still to come, anyway… Okay. Further back, then. In the summer of 1937, a boy named Tom Riddle got his Hogwarts letter."

"Tom Riddle?" Lily asked, curiously. "Tom _Marvolo_ Riddle?"

Ginny nodded. "Why? How do you know…?"

"It's not important, I'll tell you later. Finish your story first."

"Okay… So Tom Riddle wasn't a very happy kid. He lived in a run-down muggle orphanage in a bad part of London, and there was a muggle war going on, and no one had much money anywhere, or good food, or nice clothes or anything. He also wasn't a very nice kid. Like, at all. We're talking the kind of kid that looks up to gang leaders and doesn't just kick puppies but cuts them apart to see how they work, and likes to watch other kids suffer." Lily made a sort of funny face, but she didn't say anything, so Ginny went on. "He knew he had magic. He didn't know what it was called, but he was already using it intentionally, mostly to hurt people, because he could."

"Hmmm," Pandora hummed, then added, at Ginny's raised eyebrow: "Most muggleborn wizards don't learn to control their magic at all before age eleven."

"Really?" Lily sounded surprised. "I think I was like, six, maybe, the earliest time I remember using magic."

"It's not unheard-of for a child to be taught so young," her friend explained. "I would wager Sirius Orion had a wand at age seven. But it is unusual for a child to have such control so early, especially _without_ a wand, and doubly-so with no example to follow."

Ginny shrugged, and nodded. She had borrowed her older brothers' wands to practice with before she went to school, but as far as she could remember, only the twins had had any control over their accidental magic, and that might have been because they only wanted to cause chaos and mischief.

"Huh. Okay. Sorry – go on."

"Right, where was I? Riddle had had pretty good control of his magic for a few years, at least, and that helped him hold his own against the older, bigger kids at the orphanage. By the time he was eleven, they mostly left him alone, or else. His only friends were snakes. He could talk to them, you see."

The older witches' eyes widened. Lily choked on her stew.

"M. de Mort?" Pandora asked to confirm, casting a silent _anapeo_ on her fellow Healer.

Ginny nodded gravely.

"That fucker is Tom Riddle?" Lily repeated, astonished.

Ginny nodded again, then demonstrated the anagram for them just as Riddle had once demonstrated it for Harry. _TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE_ shifted to _I AM LORD VOLDEMORT_ in glowing red letters.

To her immense surprise, and apparently Pandora's as well, Lily began to laugh hysterically. "Oh, Merlin – don't you guys see it? This is hilarious. _Jessie was right_. This is almost _better_ than _Tromedlov_. It's the same principle. I bet he even got it from the same place – muggle orphanage, jeez…"

Ginny didn't get it. "Erm… Lily?"

"It's okay. It's fine. Muggle joke," she took a deep breath, and arranged her features in a mask of sobriety. "Okay, I'm over it. Go on."

"But –"

"Later."

"Fine! Stop interrupting, then," she snapped. Lily snorted with suppressed laughter, but nodded. "Okay, so we have this eleven-year-old future Dark Lord getting his letter from Dumbledore, because he was the deputy headmaster back then. And Dumbledore _legilimizes_ him, and realizes what a terrible person he is already, but Riddle doesn't know what he's doing. He's a natural legilimens himself, if I didn't say, but he doesn't remember a time when he _didn't_ know what people around him were thinking and feeling, so he doesn't know it's not something that everyone has to deal with, at that point, and he already just totally ignored all of their emotions because he just _didn't get_ most of them, except anger and fear, but really, that was most of what they were feeling anyway… those early memories are really weird."

"Memories?" Pandora asked, but Lily talked over her.

"Oh, come on! Don't tell me these things! You're going to make me feel sorry for the poor kid!" she complained, apparently incapable of not interrupting.

"You… feel _sorry_ … _Why_? He was a little psychopath!"

"That doesn't mean that he didn't have a shitty childhood, and there are legitimate _curses_ that emulate uncontrolled legilimency. They drive the victim mad slowly, making them lose their sense of self. And getting legilimized has to be about the worst welcome to Magical Britain _ever_. Seriously. I mean, I'm not going to go easy on him. He's a terrible person _now_ , but he _was_ just a kid."

"Lily Irene…" Pandora interrupted.

"Fine! I'll _try_ to stop interrupting. Carry on."

Ginny waited a second, both trying to recall where she had been, and to ensure that Lily was not planning to continue _defending child-Voldemort_. That was definitely being added to the list of suspiciously _dark_ things she had heard the older witch say over the past week. "Okay. So Riddle knew that Dumbledore didn't like him, and he knew that he had misstepped, even if he didn't know how, but Dumbledore was _repulsed_ by him, and there was maybe a little fear in there as well. He wanted to go to Hogwarts, wanted to be a wizard, get out of the orphanage forever. So he backpedaled, which made Dumbledore trust him even less. But you know, whatever. It was too late anyway. That set the tone for his Hogwarts years.

"He had most of the teachers wrapped around his little finger, but he was sorted into Slytherin as a muggle-raised orphan, and he ended up threatening his classmates like he had the other orphans. But they knew more magic than he did, so he got them to lay off by making a snake bite Scorpius Malfoy. Which got him in Thea Malfoy's good books, surprisingly. A few years later, after he opened the Chamber of Secrets, openly claimed the title Heir of Slytherin and proved himself to be devastatingly good at magic, she invited him to theirs for Christmas, and introduced him to Abraxas, their older brother."

"I'm sure she thought he would be a useful pawn," Lily smirked.

"Probably," Ginny agreed. "But he wasn't really the pawn _type_. What he really wanted was to get enough power that he could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and nobody could stop him or tell him what to do." Lily didn't react to this, but the look Pandora shot at her made Ginny think that it was another thing she might have agreed with. She continued without pause: "And he also wanted to live forever. The summer after his third year, the muggles were bombing London, and he had to go back anyway, so he decided that he was going to find a way to protect himself from dying. Ever. It took him a while to figure out, but he eventually found a ritual that could do it. It had a few holes in it, but he was cocky and clever and charming, and he patched it together and enchanted a diary, and then… do either of you know what a horcrux is?"

Pandora shook her head, but Lily's jaw dropped. "Seriously? No one actually _makes horcruxes_!"

"What is a horcrux?"

Lily explained before Ginny could. "It's a soul anchor. Black Arts, destructive, mostly. It calls for a human sacrifice, but you know how Destruction isn't that picky. Any power source on par with a human life would do if there's a bit of ruin involved in gathering it. And then there's a lot of enchanting to prepare the vessel. A nasty power-transfer, and it's got to be yours. It's pretty cool arithmancy. I have a copy of the breakdown somewhere. But the point is, you make this anchor so your soul can't move on from this plane. If your body is killed, you can re-possess it as a lich, or if it's destroyed, you get sucked into the horcrux, and then you can be re-embodied through any number of different processes, depending on how willing you are to pervert the natural order of things."

"The horcrux is _splitting your soul_ ," Ginny said with a glare. "It doesn't get much more perverted than that."

"Depends on how you think of the soul, doesn't it? It's worse in my books to actually _create unnatural life_ than it is to simply prolong the inevitable." The redhead grinned, shooting a significant look at Pandora, who glared at her, but didn't explain.

"So you don't think it's wrong, to make a horcrux?" Ginny asked, shocked.

Lily squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. She didn't look guilty, but more as though she knew she ought to, pinned beneath both Ginny's and Pandora's sharp stares. "No. Yes. Maybe? I mean, I know _other_ people think it's wrong, but it's your own soul, so I kind of think you should be able to do whatever you want with it, and there are ways to do the ritual without a human sacrifice, or you could even use a Death Eater, if you wanted. It doesn't have to be an _innocent_ life.

"I do think it's _stupid_ , though. You can get trapped in a book or a necklace or something basically forever, if your plan to get reincarnated fails. Or turn yourself into a lich and get enslaved by a necromancer. Or get kissed by a dementor. Or if someone who knows what they're doing with soul magic gets ahold of your horcrux, they have basically the best conductor of sympathetic magic possible and can wreak all sorts of havoc on the other half of your soul _and_ your body. They're conceptually really cool, and maybe a good safety net, but they're not exactly fool-proof. Not to mention they're supposedly awfully painful to make, and if you screw it up, your whole soul could be destroyed, not just broken, and you have to give up some of your magic to the vessel to make it work properly."

Ginny nodded absently, but she was stuck on that last option. "Theoretically… if someone made more than _one_ horcrux, and we had one of them, could you use it to destroy all of them at once?" she asked slowly.

Pandora raised an eyebrow at her. "How many are there?"

Before she could answer, Lily jumped in. "Really? Are you _shitting_ me? He made _more than one_?"

"Five," Ginny deadpanned.

"Dark Powers! That is just… _monumentally_ stupid! I mean, more insurance, great. But you have to _give up_ some of your magic every time you make one. You don't get that back! If you wanted them to even have a _chance_ of working to possess someone to reincarnate you, you'd end up with like, a _tiny_ fraction of your original power. No. There's no way. I've fought him, and there's _no_ way he once had even _twice_ as much magical strength as he has now. Even if he used some sort of ritual augmentation to beef up his reserves between horcruxes. Nope. Don't buy it."

"He did it. I don't know _how_ exactly, but he changed the ritual. Maybe he didn't give up any more magic after the first one, or not as much?"

Lily looked doubtful. "But then only the first one would have full functionality. The others would just be like… oh, no – I take it back. That's actually really clever."

"What is?" Pandora asked.

"The other four anchors would still function as anchors, but they wouldn't necessarily have enough power or intelligence to possess someone and re-incarnate themselves. Only the first could do that. But that's _good_ , because he wouldn't want younger versions of himself possibly being found or ensnaring someone and possessing them and finding a way to reincarnate _before_ he died. I mean, ideally, the re-united soul and the original life-spark would be re-embodied together, but there _are_ other ways to do it, theoretically. Nasty, messy theory, from what I recall – it's not like I actually made a study of this shite – but I'm _sure_ he would have known enough to piece together the details. If I were him, I'd be worried about a horcrux escaping and deciding that _he_ was the _real_ Tom Riddle."

"That – that can _happen_?" Ginny asked, both shocked and appalled to get a relatively reasonable explanation of a question that had been bothering her for ages. She didn't have _all_ of Riddle's memories, and she definitely didn't have the theory background to fill in the blanks behind some of his decisions. It was definitely disturbing that Lily _did_ , but it gave her a slim hope that they might be able to find and destroy the things.

The older witch shrugged. "Sure. I don't see why not."

"I am still interested in the answer to Ginevra Phyllis' question," Pandora volunteered. "Is it possible to use one horcrux to destroy all of the others at once?"

Lily hummed speculatively. "Possibly? Maybe? But I kind of suspect that he's taken measures against anything I can think of in like, the next five minutes. There's not much point in making more than one if they can all be destroyed at once. Honestly, if we want to make sure we get them all, we'll probably have to use one to track down the others and then destroy or un-make them individually."

"Are you seriously telling me that there's a way to use one horcrux to find the others?"

"Well, yeah," Lily rolled her eyes. "I mean, unless something goes really _fantastically_ wrong."

"Does that mean that the Wanker would know if we were to start picking them off?"

"Dunno. I'd have to make one to find out. Or more realistically, more than one. There wasn't a lot written about what a split soul _feels like_ , other than painful, and I expect that if you still have one, you might not be able to sense all of them." Pandora gave her a _look_ , and she added, " _Sorry_ , but I just got off-shift and I'm just way too tired to censor myself!" with a pout. "So what are they?"

Ginny sighed. "A diary, from when he was sixteen, though he continued to share memories with it and write in it for about five years after that, while he went through the process of making the others. Then he hid them. I _might_ know where two of them are. None of the others ended up where he considered putting them. The second one was a Gaunt family heirloom, a ring. Third and fourth were a Slytherin heirloom locket and the Chalice of Hufflepuff. And the last was the Diadem of Ravenclaw. The diadem is at Hogwarts, in the Room of Requirement, I think. And the diary was given to me when I was eleven by Lucius Malfoy."

A moment of silence greeted this statement. Then Lily grinned. "I need to talk to some people, but I think that should be _more_ than do-able."

"Lily Irene…"

"Seriously, Dora – it'll be fine. I'll even run the plan past you first, if you want. Both of you, even. But it's going to happen. We can't just let this knowledge go to waste."

Ginny yawned hugely, interrupting their developing debate. Pandora took the opportunity to break up their little party for the evening.


	4. The Story (Part 2)

"No," Pandora said firmly, on hearing Lily's initial plan to acquire the First Horcrux, two days later. Her prediction had, rather unfortunately, come to pass, and the Healers had been far too busy the previous evening to further discuss the future, or Ginny's knowledge of their own time period. "It's far too reckless, and besides, there may be more important details yet to be revealed."

"But –"

"What guarantee have you that the Skeeter woman would not turn on you in an instant? Or that Lady Malfoy would agree to a proper parley? Or that her sister would not hear tell of the arrangement?"

"Rita still owes me for tipping her off over her big break, and Narcissa… we once had a fairly good working relationship, you know."

"Seven years ago. The world has changed, ever so slightly, since then, in case you have somehow failed to notice. No. And that's final."

"I could do it anyway," the redhead said sullenly. "I don't need your permission."

"But you do need Ginevra's and you trust my judgement more than your own, and we both know it," the serene witch said dismissively. "Now, if you please, I believe we had made it to the 1940s, or thereabouts, before the tale was diverted with talk of Black rituals and soul magic?"

"Um…" Ginny was still stuck on the fact that Lily Evans had known that evil cow, Narcissa Malfoy, well enough to be on first-name terms (was Mrs. Malfoy secretly a muggleborn sympathizer? Impossible!) and that she was, apparently, one of the reasons Rita Skeeter had become a household name in Magical Britain over the course of Ginny's lifetime.

The ill-connected witch sighed. "Yes, fine, I suppose. Go on with it. You'd just said that Riddle decided in his third year to make a horcrux. Or five. Bloody madman."

The time-traveler snorted. "Uh, yeah. He is. Okay. So he made his first horcrux in 1943, when he was sixteen, with a diary and the death of a girl named Myrtle, Moaning Myrtle who haunts the second-floor lav at Hogwarts – that's where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is, by the way."

Lily failed to hide a grin, and Ginny paused long enough for her to say, "Bet he loved that."

"It did irk him just a tad," she agreed lightly. "The second one was made in 1944, the summer before his last year at Hogwarts, with his father's death and the Gaunt family ring. He had _issues_ with his father, you could say."

" _Ironic_ ," the green-eyed healer muttered, but declined to answer Ginny's inquiring look with an explanation, so she went on.

"Riddle tried to apply for the Defense post at Hogwarts, but was told he wasn't old enough, so he took a rather menial job that allowed him to focus on his extra-curricular Dark Arts studies. He came across Slytherin's Locket and the Chalice of Hufflepuff in 1947 and immediately decided that they would become additional horcruxes. After they were made, he decided it was time to leave Britain: his immediate immortality was assured, and he wanted to look into eternal youth before he got too old. Since he would be travelling anyway, he decided that he would make finding the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw a priority. He had gotten the story of where it was hidden out of the Grey Lady while he was still in school, and he was already thinking that it would make a good horcrux back then. It turns out he did manage it, because that's what Harry was looking for, on – on that last night," she explained, her voice cracking slightly.

She had gathered that much from overheard snippets of conversation between terrified, evacuating Ravenclaws. He had gone to their common room, demanded to know what artifacts she might have left behind, _crucio'd_ the male Carrow for spitting at McGonagall… and now he was _dead_ , along with Fred and Colin and so many others. They had come _so close_ to defeating the monster, and yet…

She quashed her grief as well as she could. This was no time for sniveling over a future she was going to change anyway! Pandora passed her a handkerchief, which she set aside and studiously ignored. Lily went from looking vaguely uncomfortable to smirking slightly, as though she knew Ginny saw the square of transfigured linen as a hopeless indicator of weakness. The youngest of the trio glared at her. She knew _nothing_ of what Ginny had gone through! Anger drove back the pain enough to continue.

"The Diadem is hidden at Hogwarts, in the Room of Requirement, somehow, I think," she said, her voice distant and hollow. "I don't know what happened after that, because he left the diary behind, hidden, when he began to travel, and did not update it. I know… from bits of history and stories I've pieced together, I'm pretty sure, he came back to Britain in the 1950s, and started the Death Eaters by the 1960s. You'd know more than I would, about that," she nodded to Pandora.

The silver-eyed witch nodded. "They grew more powerful over the course of my childhood, whispers and bogey men. But they were not a widely-recognized problem until 1970, when they attacked the Ministry Christmas Ball, and then the Aurory attacked the Bacchanalia the following spring, and raids began to escalate. Auror 'protection' at the Festa Morgana in 1973 started a riot, and since then M. de Mort and the Lady Blackheart have been more or less in a state of open war with Dumbledore and Crouch. Not that the latter pair are nearly so well coordinated."

Lily sniggered. "I don't think old Barty swings that way, Dora. _Young_ Barty, now… They're _together_ ," she explained to the time-traveler. "Riddle and Black. Have been for ages. Sev used to give Sirius all kinds of shite about it."

"Lily Irene, is this _really_ the time?"

The smirking witch sighed. "Imagine, humor to lighten the mood in the face of horror. Clearly my fiancé has been a terrible influence on me. Go on, Ginny."

"O…kay. So the way the books teach it, there were nine major battles of the first war. The First Battle in '78; the Battle of Artemis, Golem Downs, and the Diagon Alley Massacre in '79; Denbigh Moor, Wolf Moon, and the Slaughter of the Innocents in '80; and Firefall and the Last Battle in '81." She counted them off on her fingers. "You, um… I imagine you know more about the first three than I do." Lily had gone hard-faced at the mention of those battles, and there were lines of tension in Pandora's serene mask. "And, well, to be honest, I don't know all that much about the details of any of them. I know that the Light won at Diagon and St. Mungo's, but the history books left out exactly _how_ , and my parents never liked to talk about the war."

"And the Dark won the other four?" Lily asked, rather outraged.

Ginny nodded. "But then, in 1981, something happened. See, there was this prophecy made, about a child who would be the one to defeat the Dark Lord. I don't know the exact wording, but I _do_ know that Snakeface only heard the first few lines, about a boy, born at the end of July in 1981, whose parents had defied the Dark Lord three times. That was why they attacked St. Mungo's, Lammastide of that year, I'm pretty sure. In the hopes of killing the baby. I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? But Harry was born in hiding, and they – you," she corrected herself, looking at Lily, "stayed in hiding for over a year."

"Harry?" Pandora asked, just as Lily said, "Me?"

Ginny took a great, shuddering breath and glanced at Lily's vaguely curious features briefly before she admitted, in a near whisper, "Harry Potter… son of James and Lily Potter."

"I have a kid? Wait, how far in the future are you _from_?"

It was strange to think that that hadn't come up, yet, in the excitement of sharing her knowledge of Riddle and the war. In fact, it was rather strange that neither of them had yet demanded proof of her story, or to know how she knew. "1998. I'm from 1998. In 1992, my first year at Hogwarts, I was given the Diary horcrux by Lucius Malfoy, and it began to possess me. It used me to open the Chamber of Secrets. Harry is only a year older than me. He killed the Hogwarts Basilisk with the Sword of Gryffindor and destroyed the diary in the spring of 1993. He saved my life, but I was on the brink of death, with Riddle's soul half-bound to mine. When Harry… ripped him out of me… many of his memories were left behind. I – that's how I know most of this."

Pandora nodded, with an expression that said things were falling into place, but Lily looked outraged. "Please tell me you're having us on."

"Uh… no?" Ginny almost laughed at Lily's obvious disbelief. Surely having acquired a horcrux's memories was not any less likely than having been cast nineteen years into her own past?

"Why the hell was my twelve-year-old son anywhere near a _basilisk_ armed with a _sword_?"

Oh, _that_.

Pandora _did_ laugh. "Isn't it obvious, Lily Irene? He clearly inherited your penchant for… creative problem-solving and James Charles' noble streak."

The Gryffindor healer shut up. She crossed her arms, her face as red as her hair, and glowered at Ginny. "Go on."

Ginny swallowed hard. It was a very intimidating glower, and the next part of the story was possibly even worse than the idea of a twelve-year-old facing off against a giant snake. "Well, I don't really know that much about what happened between the last time Riddle wrote in the diary until now, because it was hidden away somewhere, and like I said the history books aren't all too clear on the details, and it's not like anyone outright said anything to me about it except for my family – the Weasleys and the Prewetts. Even that wasn't much, but you pick things up here and there, you know?"

Both witches nodded.

"Harry was, or will be, maybe? No, I'll use _was_. It's easier. He was born in 1980. July 31," the time traveler said abruptly. "Luna, your daughter, Pandora, was born in 1981. Her birthday was the 13th of February, but she insisted on celebrating it every Friday the thirteenth."

"That sounds like something my Xeno would encourage," the witch smiled.

"Luna's an oracle. I expect you'd figure that out soon enough," Ginny said with a small grin.

Pandora nodded. "It runs in the family, in a way."

"As far as I can tell from the hints she's given me over the years, there was a prophecy made about either Harry or Neville, Alice and Frank Longbottom's son, and the Dark Wanker. I don't know what it said, exactly, or when it was made, but the Wanker found out about it, and decided it was definitely Harry. He attacked the house where you were staying in 1981, on Halloween, and, well…"

"Well _what_?" Lily was practically falling out of her chair, she had leaned so far forward.

"James tried to hold him off, and you… you sacrificed yourself to save Harry. I don't know how, but you died, and he lived, and the Wanker was destroyed. He spent the next thirteen years without a body. Harry… Dumbledore sent Harry to live with your muggle sister, under blood wards that were supposed to protect him from MoldyShorts and the Death Eaters, because not even half of them ended up in Azkaban."

The green-eyed witch hadn't reacted at all when Ginny had mentioned her own death, but she glared fiercely at the idea that her son would go to live with her sister. "Not Sirius?"

"He ended up in Azkaban, framed for betraying you. It turned out Peter Pettigrew was a rat animagus, and you made him your secret keeper, for the Fidelius Charm."

"Right, I'll be having a _word_ with him as soon as possible, but right now… who was the other godparent? Not Sev – much as I'd want him, well… he _is_ a Death Eater."

"You'd've made _Snape_ his godfather?!" Ginny exclaimed, aghast. "But Snape and Harry – they _hated_ each other."

"Wait – if I'm dead, how did they even _know_ each other?" Lily asked.

"Snape's our potions professor, or, well, he was. He murdered the Headmaster last year, and MoldyShorts made him the new Headmaster."

"Sev ended up _teaching_? That's fucking tragic."

"He _murdered Dumbledore_ , and all you care about is that he was a teacher?!"

Lily just shrugged. "He's wanted to murder Dumbledore since sixth year. Bet he was a miserable professor, though. He hated tutoring. I can't even imagine him teaching a core subject."

Ginny stared at the older witch hard, for a long moment before deciding to give her the benefit of a doubt. "Are you like, in shock or something? Because we can take a break…"

The witch in question looked a bit confused at her concern. "I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be? Anyway, I was _going_ to say that yes, I'd choose Sev, because he's been more family to me than my actual sister ever was, even if we haven't talked in a year and a half. It doesn't matter, though. Obviously I _didn't_ choose him. Who was it? Pandora? Someone else in the Order? Lupin's not allowed because we live in a fucking fascist state, but –"

"Alice Longbottom."

"Alice? Why…? Nevermind, I don't suppose I would've told anyone. So why didn't the kid go to _her_? Or my parents? Or _your_ parents? Or literally any magical family _at all_? Change his name, change his birthdate, he could have been raised as a Bones, or a McKinnon!"

"The Longbottoms were attacked a week after you. Bellatrix Lestrange crucio'd them into insanity. I guess your parents were probably dead. All the Boneses except Amelia and Susan, who's Harry's age, were killed. And most of the McKinnons, too. Lupin couldn't for, um… health reasons. Amos Diggory had a breakdown after Alice was sent to St. Mungo's, and I think the Malfoys had a better claim on him than we did, seeing as Narcissa's Sirius' first-cousin. So no one on our side fought it when Dumbledore hid him away, even after we found out that he was with… _her_. And since he was with a second-degree blood relative, none of the other side could challenge it."

"So it's Dumbledore's fault."

"It was for his own safety," Ginny protested.

"Petunia _hates_ magic – anything unusual or strange! She prides herself on her mugglishness! We haven't been on friendly terms since I started at Hogwarts. The _best_ he would have gotten from her would be cold tolerance – no love or even acceptance. I would _rather_ my son live with Narcissa Black than Petunia _Dursley_! At least she would have known how to prepare him for –"

Ginny was appalled. "First Snape, and now _Narcissa Malfoy_? Seriously?! She'd have him kitted out like a little Death Eater before Hogwarts, if he wasn't killed off before his second birthday!"

"Well, she wouldn't be my _first_ choice, but she's not _that_ bad. Spoilt, selfish and a bit uptight, but she always comes out ahead, and living with Petunia is way more likely to make a kid hate muggles. Narcissa would probably never mention that muggles _existed_ if she could help it. And if the Death Eaters thought she was going to turn him, they'd leave him alone, wouldn't they?" she smirked, as though making an unquestionable argument.

"You're impossible! Absolutely –"

"Ginevra Phyllis," Pandora interrupted, with the same stern tone she used to shut down Lily's ranting. Ginny flushed, and shut her mouth. "Lily Irene is perfectly capable of choosing a godparent by her own criteria. Besides, she isn't even married yet, let alone expecting."

" _Thank_ you, Pandora!"

The elder witch turned mirror-bright eyes on her friend with a small smile. "Lily Irene, you are derailing the story." Lily flushed, and made a lip-zipping gesture. "Please go on, Ginevra Phyllis."

The youngest of the trio glared at the others for another long moment before she asked, "Where was I?"

"1981," the eldest suggested.

"Oh, well. Like I said, the Potters were in hiding, behind a Fidelius Charm, with Pettigrew as the Secret Keeper, even though everyone thought it was Black. MouldyShorts… he disappeared. It was never clear if his body was destroyed, or if he got away, or what, but I know when he showed up again, it was as a shade. If anyone knows how the protection on Harry worked, they never told me."

"I thought you said there were blood wards," Lily noted.

Ginny shook her head. "Harry said Dumbledore did those, and that was why he had to live with your sister. I mean I have no idea what you did to protect him on Halloween of 1981."

"It was Samhain?" the older witch said speculatively. "Hmmm…"

" _Anyway_ , after that, there was a ten-year… ceasefire, of sorts. About a half of the Death Eaters pled _Imperius_ and got off with major fines – the Malfoys took the lead in that, by the way, and it took a couple of years to round up most of the other stragglers. Um… Crouch's son turned out to be a Death Eater, so he was made to step down as the Head of the DMLE in 1981 – Hermione said that's one of the reasons Sirius never got a proper trial, reorganization in the department. Adamant Smith was the interim Head until Bagnold was replaced by Turpin in '83. Turpin cleaned house and found that Smith was a Death Eater sympathizer, so he was replaced with Amelia Bones in '84.

"By the time I was old enough to start asking questions about the war, the Truce was already in place – basically an agreement to put the war behind us all, and not talk about it except in the most vague and factual of terms. Mum didn't really agree with it – she told us all about what the Yaxleys and Dolohov and the Selwyns had done to our family, killing her brothers, and about Wilkes torturing her sister to death. We grew up knowing who we were supposed to hate. Malfoy, Nott, Rosier, Prince, Lestrange, Parkinson, Yaxley, Selwyn, Burke – there were hardly any old families who didn't have at least one or two people on one side or the other, but she said the ones who bought their way out of Azkaban were the worst.

"Then in 1991, the Dark Wanker came back as a shade, possessed the Defense Professor, and tried to steal the Philosopher's Stone. And in 1992, I was possessed by the diary. Sirius escaped from Azkaban in 1993. We found out about Pettigrew in '94, and he – the Wanker – got a new body in 1995."

"How?" Lily interrupted again, for the first time in minutes.

Ginny could only shrug. "Everything I know about that is second hand from things my brother Ron overheard while Harry was having nightmares. He didn't like to talk about it, but they were in the same dorm, you see. I think he took Harry's blood, and I know it happened in a cemetery, and Cedric Diggory died. Someone cut off his own hand, and there was an evil, demon baby involved, possibly. Ron thought that last bit might have just been a dream, though. Is that, erm… important?"

"Everything and anything could be important, Ginevra," Pandora smiled reassuringly.

"Evil, demon baby, and my son's blood…" Lily muttered under her breath, then added at a more normal volume: "Go on, I'm listening."

The time traveler hesitated. She didn't particularly care to examine her own experiences in the war too closely, and they were getting disturbingly close to that period. But she couldn't exactly refuse to tell them at least the basics, especially when Pandora had just said that anything might be important. "He – the Dark Wanker – spent most of the next year trying to get at the record of the prophecy in the Department of Mysteries. The Order was guarding it. My father was nearly killed guarding it. Harry… I think he was having visions, or dreams, where he was in the Wanker's head. He thought he was being possessed, or something. Stupid boy. Being possessed isn't like that at all."

Lily hummed. "No, if anything, it's more the other way around…"

Pandora gave her a startled look. " _Subsumption_ , Lily Irene?!"

"What? No! It was voluntary, and it was only Sev! I wanted to see what Legilimency was like, that's all!"

"Erm… what?"

"It's not important, Ginny – No, Dora, seriously, it was _ages_ ago, and it was only a _little_ possession, and it's not like I can do it on a whim – it was a spell that emulated a twin bond. Almost like the Tyrolian Trimaguum, but less total. I swear, it's like you think I'm the next coming of Satan himself some days."

Pandora raised a silvery eyebrow at her skeptically. "The devil's daughter, perhaps. I rather think M. de Mort would take exception to your usurping his title."

Lily, predictably, smirked at this. "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here, Ferdinand?"

"Not _all_."

"Oh, shut up. Gin, go on with the story," the redhead ordered crossly. "Possession?"

Ginny, baffled, looked between the two older witches for a moment before she decided an explanation was not forthcoming. She sighed. Sometimes it was like hanging about with Fred and George to be around these two, or perhaps a calmer, more mature Luna and a darker, more vicious Hermione, always speaking in some sort of code – half old memories and in-jokes, and half obscure references no one else would catch, though it was not, apparently, intentional.

"Ah, right… so Harry thought he was being possessed, but he wasn't, and I'm not sure what was going on there, but apparently it was like, an ongoing thing? Hermione mentioned that he was supposed to be taking Occlumency lessons from Snape, but they weren't getting on well. Which really wasn't surprising. And then at the end of the year, he said he'd had a vision of the Wanker torturing Sirius at the Ministry, and he had to go – _we_ had to go. We tried to save him, but… but it turns out he wasn't there at all – that _bastard_ managed to trick Harry somehow, and it was just a bunch of Death Eaters waiting for us to get the Prophecy.

"We fought back, but it would have been only a matter of time until they caught us, except the Order came to save us, and – and Bellatrix cursed Sirius, and he fell through the Veil of Death… because of us. Because he was there to save Harry.

"I don't think Harry ever got over that. Sirius was the closest thing to a parent he'd ever had, you see. The only one he'd ever known. And he only had him for such a short time. And it was because Harry had been tricked, because he had run into danger, that Sirius was even there, and not in hiding like he ought to have been… He wasn't the same, after. Dumbledore started paying more attention to him, telling him things about Riddle's life, before Voldemort. The whole next school year was… bad. Not as bad as the one before, in some ways, but…

"The Bastard kept his head down during fourth year – he didn't want the Ministry rallying against him before he was ready, before he could recruit allies, I guess. But he revealed himself at the Ministry, when the Order was about to capture the Death Eaters he had sent, so by fifth year, everyone knew, and we were really at war, or at least, the adults were, outside the school. Dumbledore… he'd been cursed, or something, over the summer. His hand. He was teaching Harry about Riddle because he knew he wouldn't have enough time to finish what he had started, hunting down Riddle's horcruxes.

"I – I should have told him, them, what I knew. It might have saved them time. But I didn't. I couldn't tell anyone about – about Riddle's memories. Dumbledore especially… he wouldn't have understood that I was still _me_." She sniffled, and swiped viciously at the tears that were threatening to fall.

"Guess it's a good thing the nosey old bugger can't be arsed to question you himself," Lily smirked.

"What… are you going to _tell_ him?" Ginny asked, momentarily forgetting the elder witches' opinions on their Fearless Leader in her panic. "You can't!"

The Healers exchanged a _look_ , and then Pandora said, simply, "No."

"N-no?"

"We trust you, Ginevra."

"Plus we're sworn to secrecy, remember?"

 _Well,_ now _I do_ , Ginny thought, feeling incredibly stupid, as well as somewhat relieved.

Pandora glared at Lily. "Even if we weren't, we would not betray your trust. You have not lied to us. You have not tried to hide anything. You are deeply damaged, yes, but the memories you stole from the one who would have subjugated you have not tainted you with his madness."

"And honestly, if it comes down to it, you're not as damaged as, say… Sirius."

"Or Lily," Pandora added pointedly, though she smirked slightly herself as she added: "Though both she and Sirius Orion are quite mad, too."

"Brilliant. The word you're looking for is _brilliant_ ," she corrected her friend. "At least for me. That Sirius Black is a bit of a nutter."

"Madness and brilliance are not mutually exclusive. My Xeno would say they go hand in hand. But the point remains, we would not betray your confidence, Ginevra, even if we could. Albus Dumbledore is a very intelligent, powerful wizard, but he has his flaws, like any other, and his stubborn adherence to his Gryffindorish worldview is one of them."

Ginny sighed, ignoring the former Ravenclaw's jab at Gryffindor. Sometimes she wished that life could be so simple as it was when she was a child, and Albus Dumbledore was brilliant and infallible, rather than merely human.

"Yeah, no worries, hon. If he looks to be getting suspicious about your cover, I'll tell him you're a time traveler, and I ran the arithmancy, and you can't tell him anything, for risk of destabilizing the time-line, or some other pseudo-realistic sounding BS. He's clearly afraid of his own power, so I highly doubt he'll press the issue."

"Afraid of his own power? Dumbledore?"

Pandora nodded. "Oh, yes. Why else would the most powerful wizard in Britain turn down the ministry to teach, and even then refuse to actively shape the experiences of three-quarters or more of the school? He is no Slughorn, to make and exploit connections, and no Flitwick, interested in shaping young minds. He looks to the big picture, with the Progressive Agenda, normalizing the muggleborn experience, but that he could do just as well and with more effect elsewhere, as he does in the Wizengamot. Hogwarts is his refuge from the temptation to re-make the world."

"That's…" That made a lot of sense, actually.

Lily apparently misinterpreted her neglected sentence, because she gave the younger girl a positively cynical smirk. "Do you really think that, if Dumbledore was willing to use all of his power and resources, this war would have gone on so long? It's been nine _years_ , Gin. The Dark is playing games, and the Light is taking it all too seriously, and we're _still_ not making any headway, because _someone_ is afraid to escalate the situation to the point that he will have to actually _act._ And if _that_ isn't enough, look at the laws he's put through in the last thirty years, restricting access to any magic that is remotely powerful – rituals, healing, weatherworking, alchemy – honestly, it's absurd."

"You, um… isn't that what the Dark say?"

The redhead glared. "You can't possibly think that I'm actually for the Light, here, can you? I mean, I'm not for the Dark, either, if they're being led by that madman, and I don't approve of much of the Traditionalist agenda, seeing as I did grow up as a muggleborn at Hogwarts, and I _know_ how hard it would be for me to find work even if I wasn't a target in this bloody stupid war, but I _certainly_ don't think the sun shines out of Dumbledore's arsehole or that we ought to set aside the lion's share of our power because of how it _could_ be used by _someone_."

"And _that_ ," Pandora interrupted, "is exactly why he doesn't trust you, either."

"We're in a _war_ , Dora! Anything goes!"

"The only people who truly believe that are you, Auror Moody, and Sirius Orion!"

" _And_ the _entire_ _enemy side_!"

"As though lowering yourself to their level is a good thing?"

"It is if it stops them from killing us all! I didn't see you complaining after Imbolc!"

"Imbolc was _incredibly dangerous_! You should never even have _attempted_ that ritual! You're not at all suited to it!"

Ginny nearly did a double-take at the sudden escalation: she had _never_ heard Mrs. Lovegood yell, even when she and the boys had taken the seven-year-old Luna on an impromptu two-day camping trip without telling anyone. _Her_ mother had yelled at them for hours, but Pandora had just asked whether they'd found any new and interesting creatures on their two-day "walk."

"The Youthful Power seemed to think I was," Lily said triumphantly, sticking out her tongue at her older friend.

"What happened at Imbolc?" Ginny vaguely recalled the old, traditionalist holiday. It was sometime in February, and had to do with youth and potential. She didn't know anyone who actually _celebrated_ it, though.

"Don't ask," Lily advised.

"The Battle of Artemis, I believe you called it," Pandora explained.

The time-traveler blanched. The Battle of Artemis had taken place in Hogsmeade, and it had been a slaughter. Someone on the Light side had summoned a construct that had taken the form of the Goddess and hunted down the Death Eaters like animals. Were they _really_ suggesting that _Lily Evans_ had been responsible for that?

"Yeah, well, _anyway_ , if we're through discussing my possible impending war crimes tribunal, shall we continue with the story?"

It seemed they were. For perhaps the fiftieth time since her arrival, barely two weeks before, Ginny felt as though she were drowning in this strange tide of events, so different from her expectations, and anything she had ever before experienced, even in her own war. She shoved the feeling away, but before she could continue, a siren started wailing about incoming wounded.

"Oh, bloody hell. Later. I still want the rest of the story," Lily insisted, hauling herself to her feet. Pandora was already at the door, headed toward the large, open receiving bay.

Ginny followed them, eager to help. A healer's work left no room to concentrate on anything other than fixing shattered bones and torn muscles and the scorched skin of the lashes across Sirius Black's fire-whipped back.

She relished the reprieve from thinking about her friends, left behind in the future, and their own war wounds, less easily healed.


	5. Traitor

The day after the second installment of Ginny's tale was the third Friday of the month, which had begun on a Tuesday. This meant, according to Jessie and Becca, that Pandora would be spending the day (and the weekend to follow) with Xeno, working to get the latest edition of the Quibbler printed and ready for distribution on Monday. Why the magazine was published on the third Monday of the month, none of them had any idea. Luna had once told Ginny it was tradition, and encouraged the accumulation of wide-eyed gobwobblers. Personally, Ginny thought it was simply another way to make its owner seem even more insane than he actually was – a façade which she now knew he had maintained since about this period in order to avoid persecution for his articles while still disseminating the truth… to those who knew how to interpret it.

In any case, this meant that Ginny was inclined to hold off on telling the rest of the story for the moment. Not only was she not inclined to tell it more than once, she greatly desired the serene healer's presence to help keep Lily in check as she began recounting the events of Harry's life ( _and death – but don't think about that_ ).

Even if she had been willing to tell the rest of it, the Safehouse was, once again, abuzz with activity. Moody came by to have Lily look at a suspicious rash. He suspected poisoning. Lily suspected a prank. Sirius came by to have his burns examined, pick up the latest supply requisition list, and have the curses Moody had set on him removed. Apparently 'I was just checking your CONSTANT VIGILANCE' was not an acceptable excuse for putting an itching potion on a man's towels. James tagged along for the excuse to visit Lily, and also apparently for the opportunity to further mock Sirius about his failed prank. Dumbledore made his weekly visit and insisted on chatting with Ginny, who added as few details as she could to her cover story, and spent the hour after he left attempting to recall everything she might have said, in order to write it down and not contradict herself in the future. Lying about her entire life, she was finding, was more difficult than she had initially imagined it would be.

Frank Longbottom dragged Alice Diggory in late that evening. She insisted she felt perfectly fine, but he was complaining that she 'hadn't been quite right' since the raid the night before. Lily berated them soundly for not reporting in with the other Order Auror teams who had been involved before spending two hours teaching Jessie, Becca, and Ginny a slew of diagnostic charms and the proper differential diagnosis to determine the specific time-delayed mood-altering curse she had been hit with.

It turned out to be fairly nasty.

"So you're saying if we don't get rid of it in the next six hours or so, she's likely to go berserk and try to kill me?" Frank summarized incredulously.

Lily shrugged, closing her reference book with a snap. "Or herself. Sometimes it's not quite strong enough to overcome the target's love. It doesn't quite negate it, but it can re-direct it to become self-destructive, rather than destroying the love in question."

"Well, how do we get _rid_ of it?!" Alice snapped. Her slightly ruddy features had gone pale at the thought of her impending doom, or possibly at the fact that they had come so close to not coming in at all.

"What, you don't want to find out if your love for Frankie here is strong enough to overcome the Madness of Heracles?"

"Lily!" the couple shouted as one.

"Gods and powers, relax! Frank, I need you to go find me a couple of strays. Dogs or cats would be good. Jessie, Becca, set up a pair of Morrison's Circles. Alice, Jenny… I guess you can just keep each other company?" She seemed rather at a loss as to what to do with two extra pairs of hands, but after a moment, she shrugged. "Unless one of you is really good at potions?"

"I'm… not bad," Ginny admitted, curious.

"Not bad according to… your professor?"

"He gave me an 'E' on my fourth year finals."

"Well, knowing his standards… yeah, you can help. Alice…"

"I'll help Frank with the dogs," she volunteered.

"Good! Yes. Do that. And it goes without saying that anything that you see here tonight never happened, right?" the redheaded healer pointed seriously from Frank to Alice and back again.

"Sure, Evans," Frank agreed.

"If whatever we're doing works, I won't say anything," Alice nodded.

"Oh! Didn't I say? Sorry. We're moving the curse from you to one stray, feeding it a modified love potion and setting it at the other stray."

Ginny was sure that all of the others were as shocked as herself, but it was Becca who objected first. "You mean you're gonna make it kill it? Lily, you _can't_!"

"Look, Beck. It's going to be all _I_ can do to move the curse. I don't have the power to destroy something like that, and I'm not going to fuck around with trying to teach Frank Unmaking on something this important."

"Unmaking?" the auror echoed.

"Abolefascio," Lily said, turning to him. "Yeah, I thought you wouldn't know it. It's extremely dark, and it's the only way to destroy this class of curse, or, well… the least extreme option to destroy it, and still ensure that it is completely destroyed. So the only realistic option is to let it play out. Which means, unless you'd rather watch Alice try to kill Frank…"

The younger girl looked ill. "I don't think I can watch." Jessie nodded uncertainly. Ginny wished she could agree, but after the year she had just had, she was fairly sure she had seen worse. She shrugged. She was curious enough to stick it out.

"That's fine," Lily said blithely. "You don't have to be there when I trigger it."

"You're going to actually _trigger_ it?" Alice objected.

"It's not _that_ dangerous, and I'd rather _not_ spend my night babysitting a couple of strays until the timer runs out by itself. You can leave too, if you like. I'm not going to do it until we're done taking care of you, anyway."

The trainee auror huffed, but said nothing. Her mentor and future husband looked grim, but determined.

"Good? Good." Lily clapped imperiously. "Let's _go_ people, we don't have all night!"

Alice and Frank apparated out with matching cracks as the kids wandered off toward one of the storerooms.

Ginny followed Lily into the makeshift potions lab in the north-east corner of the warehouse. The older witch began muttering aloud almost at once as she searched the shelves. "Let's see. I think we still have enough Cariadona, but that would need the strength boosted considerably as well as the modification for animal use. Do you think it would be faster than brewing a modified batch of Diliction?"

"Erm…" All Ginny knew about love potions had been gathered from conversations between Fred and George as they discussed new product ideas, and she didn't know their recipes.

"Ooh! I forgot I made Amorinora a few months ago! That should work perfectly if – yes! Just enough!" the healer exclaimed, holding a jar of ashwinder eggs to the light. There were only a few left.

"Amorinora?"

"It's the counter to Amortentia," Lily explained, quickly assembling her workspace. "Hand me that mortar? Thanks, love. Anyway, A'nora is just as illegal as A'tentia because it's so easy to turn it into Echo's Tears. Glass cauldron," she pointed at the shelf behind Ginny, who passed it to her. "Thanks. Now, pluck the leaves off this knotweed and – you know Crandon's Rehydration Formula?"

"Um, yeah." Snape had taught them that one in their third year, even though it was OWL standard. It wasn't the easiest potion to make, but it was very quick and very useful, especially since Hogwarts ingredients were stored for months before they were used.

"Good. Whip up a batch and soak the stems until they're pliable, then rinse them in moon-charged water to clear." Ginny set to work stripping dried leaves from the bundle of knotweed, watching from the corner of her eye as Lily crushed dried sea-onion flowers into a powder and poured it into the cauldron, now sitting in a shallow dish of ice and water, along with a greyish, opalescent potion.

As she did so, the older witch continued to explain: "Echo's Tears causes obsession, pure and simple, far past the point of any thought of one's own health or safety. It's somewhat different from Narcissus' Cordial, because it can be targeted to another individual, and it's easier to adapt to animal use than most love or lust potions because most of them operate by building on existing affections or attraction or a preexisting idea of love and what that means to the drinker, and animals don't have that between them. If I had Amortentia, of course, we could just use that, but I hadn't expected to need it, and it takes _ages_ to brew…" she trailed off, carefully piercing each ashwinder egg with a silver needle and allowing the contents – which looked like a cross between egg yolk and lava – to drip into the cauldron and the potion. It immediately turned orange and started smoking, melting the ice in the tray. "How's that knotweed coming?"

"Nearly done," Ginny muttered, stirring the rehydration potion three more times counterclockwise and noting the change in color that indicated it was ready. She dropped the dry bundle of stems into her own cauldron and prodded it under the surface with her stirring rod, pouring the purified water into a series of beakers with her other hand.

"Fabulous. We have a window of about fifteen minutes, now," the healer told her, setting the still-steaming glass cauldron into what seemed to be some sort of distillation apparatus and tidying her workspace. She sighed.

"What is it?" Ginny asked, carefully lifting the mess of now-spaghetti-like greenery from its potion with a pair of stirring rods and dropping it into the first beaker of water.

"Oh, just thinking. I'm going to have to get Peter to bring us more ashwinder eggs tomorrow." She paused, but in such a way that the younger witch was almost certain she hadn't finished her thought. Sure enough, as she moved the knotweed again, Lily continued. "I want your permission to invite James and Sirius over, and give Peter a truth potion in their presence. And to question him about whether he is spying on the Order."

Ginny nearly dropped the plants, fishing them out of the last bath with her slippery, oversized chop-sticks. " _What_? Here," she passed them to the other witch, who added them to the now-boiling potion and quickly sealed the cover in place. The fumes began to condense into a sickly-looking yellow-green drip.

"You heard me," Lily said, when this task was complete. "I need your permission to act, since this is something I only know from your telling me."

"Didn't Pandora say we should wait, though?"

"On the horcruxes," Lily sniffed dismissively. "And I still think that plan would work. But every day we let Peter fucking Pettigrew walk free is another day he can pass information on the Order to the Death Eaters. Unless you were lying about his involvement?"

"N-no. I'm not – why would I lie about that?" Hard green eyes bored into Ginny's, as though Lily could judge her soul with a glare. She was suddenly very aware that the healers had no real reason to believe her story. _She_ hadn't sworn an oath, after all – for all Lily knew, she _was_ lying. And she could see the sense in cutting off the Death Eaters' source within the Order… and she couldn't seem to think of any convincing reason not to do it. "Okay," she said finally. "I don't think it could hurt…"

The redhead rolled her eyes, all traces of suspicion gone in an instant. "Well, it's probably going to make everything you know from after this point somewhat more subjective, but fuck it: if you're sure about staying and willing to change the timeline, I say go for broke."

"But –" Ginny began, suddenly worried that by changing this now, her information would become irrelevant, and they wouldn't be able to change something more important later – or what if, without Pettigrew to betray the Potters, Voldemort was never defeated, let alone killed?

But Lily cut her off with a grin and "No take-backs!" and before Ginny could explain, Alice and Frank reappeared with a pair of twin apparition cracks and stunned dogs in hand. The healer went to join them at once, leaving the time traveler to sigh and hope that this wasn't all going to end terribly.

xXx

It didn't end _terribly_ , though it was a close call: Sirius nearly throttled Peter before he could explain himself, and then it turned out that he had never been a willing spy in the first place. He broke down in tears of relief as soon as he realized that his (former?) friends weren't simply going to kill him out of hand for being an idiot and a coward, and getting himself into this mess, let alone trying to handle it himself and only getting pulled further into the hole he had dug.

Essentially, or so Ginny gathered, Peter had been a victim as much as anyone, having been blackmailed into a series of ever-more-compromising situations until he had found himself in the unenviable position of having to spy on his friends, lest it be revealed to them (and the aurors) what he had already done. And he hadn't been able to bring himself to admit the truth precisely because he had been such a bloody idiot.

She was uncomfortably reminded of the position she had found herself in back in her first year at Hogwarts, when she had managed to get free of Riddle's diary – if only temporarily – and yet hadn't told anyone about her idiocy, hoping that it was over and no one need ever find out.

The difference was, of course, that Peter's friends _had_ found out, and before he managed to extract himself from the situation.

Well, that and she had been entirely aware by that point that the boy who had seduced her into doing terrible things was not to be trusted, no matter how much she might have loved him once. Peter still seemed to be deluded into thinking his own Tom – Sirius' younger brother, Regulus – had only wanted what was best for him, when really he had been (as was clear to all four of the others) intentionally entrapping Peter, leading him to do something blackmail-worthy.

Peter very obviously couldn't see it.

"Fuck, Pete! What the bloody hell were you thinking trusting _Regulus_ , of all people!"

"Siri – he didn't mean to – he never wanted – and now he's _dead_!"

Sirius fixed his quivering friend with a steely-eyed glare. "That's what you get when you join up with the Dark Bastard, isn't it?"

James reined in the furious Black with a firm grip on his arm. "Harsh, Pads."

For once, Sirius jerked his arm away. "NO! No it is not! That slimy little git wanted to be a Death Eater since he was a kid. Even if he did get cold feet and run away like a coward at the end –"

"He was _worried_ about you!" Peter interrupted shrilly. "I wouldn't have even started talking to him in the first place, but he was worried about _you_ , and then…" he trailed off miserably.

Sirius seemed to deflate. He shook his head pityingly. "You loved him."

Peter flushed scarlet, but nodded hesitantly.

"Fucking idiot. He was a liar. He was a fucking _consummate_ liar, Pete. I fucking guarantee you were just a job to him. A – an assignment. He didn't care about you, no matter what he told you."

"It wasn't like that!" the pudgy young man protested. "He never said anything –"

Sirius scoffed. "Of _course_ he didn't! He just paid attention to you. Made you feel like he was the only one in the world who understood you. Like _you_ were the only one in the world who understood _him_. Maybe acted a little reluctant to admit he felt anything, implied weakness that he only trusted _you_ to know about… Fuck, Pete! Seducing someone is _not difficult_. Ask Evans if you don't believe me!"

Lily glared at the leather-clad Marauder, but she did nod, rather reluctantly. "Regulus was… a nasty piece of work, Peter."

"He was _sixteen_!" the blond protested.

"He was a _Black_!" Sirius refuted.

" _You're_ a Black," James pointed out.

Sirius punched him in the arm, hard enough that he failed to hide a wince. "That's how I know what I'm talking about! I fucking guarantee Reg was working on an initiation project when he was sixteen. You don't get into the Death Eaters without proving yourself. You just don't. And he was initiated at seventeen, so."

"I thought you had to kill someone?" James asked.

Sirius shrugged. "Sure, for the initiation ceremony. They pick a muggle that reminds you of the person you care most about in the world. It's symbolic. But to even apply to join, you have to prove you're _worthy of the honor_." He made a disgusted face, then glared impotently over an ill-concealed expression of unease when he noticed the looks James and Peter were giving him.

"How would you know?" James asked slowly.

Surprisingly, at least to Ginny, it was Lily who defended the wayward Black. "Oh, come off it, Jamie. You _know_ Bellatrix is in charge of training new Death Eaters. I'd be more surprised if Sirius _hadn't_ picked a few things up over the years."

Sirius snorted. "Not that any of it's of much use now, seeing as it's all six years or more out of date. I got pretty good at avoiding all that after third year or so. _Regulus_ though," he added pointedly, looking back to Peter, "was a perfect little Death Eater in Training. He and Narcissa used to make the new recruits teach them Dark spells in the summers for fun."

"I don't think –" Peter began, but Sirius cut him off almost at once.

"Clearly! Fuck, Pete, what would it take to convince you? If he weren't dead, I'd kidnap the bastard and make him tell you himself, but, honestly!"

Lily snorted. "You could kidnap that Rosier kid. Evan."

" _Evan_?" Sirius asked. "Were you actually on first-name terms with him?"

"We had mutual… acquaintances."

"Fucking Snivellus," James muttered. Lily punched him in the arm, ignoring his look of betrayal and his outraged "He's a _Death Eater,_ Evans!"

" _Severus_ wasn't the one who introduced us, anyway. He helped organize the Samhain and Walpurgis rituals the last couple of years at school."

"The what?" Ginny asked, but she was ignored. James looked equally confused, as did Peter.

Sirius seemed to know what she was talking about, but he just snorted. "Of course he did. Kiss-arse. Right, then, Pete, do I need to go kidnap my cousin to tell you that Reggie was using you, or will you take my bloody word for it? Because honestly, mate… Reg was a Black. You didn't rate to him, except if he could use you. Which he obviously did. And so well you're still defending the git."

Peter glared. "Is that why _you're_ friends with me? Because you're using me somehow?"

The Black scion's lip curled in an ugly smirk. "Of course not. I haven't tried to live up to my family's expectations since I was nine. But Reg did. And _he_ was _good_ at it, telling people what they wanted to hear and getting them to give him what he wanted. In this case, _you_ , in a position where you could be _forced to betray us all_ ," he added pointedly.

Peter seemed to deflate. "I believe you," he said sullenly, sniffling slightly.

James sighed, clapping him on the shoulder. "All right. What do we do now, then?" he asked the group at large.

Silence answered his question until, a few seconds later, Lily spoke up with a hesitant tone and reluctant expression which Ginny was entirely certain were false. "Well, if no one else has any ideas, I might have a few suggestions…"


End file.
